+++++ Hikawa Shrine. (Friday + 27)
Rei spent the rest of the day helping Shinji restore order to the graves. Everyone else had taken the not-so-subtle hint she'd given them to take Clare and the Kodama into the Tree and help them settle their nerves. She was used to working in silence, preferring it to those moments around the Shrine itself where she'd had to be pleasant and peaceful regardless of how she felt about anything or everything else. As she allowed Shinji to think, as he seemed wont to do, she herself gave some thought to what it was that she believed would be 'right' to do. She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she failed to notice him approach her from behind, and gave a startled 'eep' as she spun around when his hand gently touched her shoulder.
"S-sorry!" Shinji had withdrawn his hand as if it had touched a stovetop burner set to high. "I-I'm sorry, I-I-"
"No, no," she berated herself mentally while restoring the exterior appearance of order and calm, "I'm the one who needs to be sorry. I stayed out here with you to give you someone to talk to, and here I am jumping like a cat that's had water doused over it despite knowing you're there. I'm sorry, Shinji. Please, what can I do?"
He worked the thumb of one hand into the palm of the other for a few seconds, thinking through how to put voice to something that he never thought he'd have to discuss with anyone ever. "You…you, uhm…." He swallowed hard, clenched his eyes shut, and ground out through clenched teeth. "I want you to know how blessed I feel knowing that you are here with me." He quaked, just ever so slightly, as anxiety locked his spine in place. "I…would like…to…to ask…." Further words were set aside as he felt a soft pair of lips touch his with exploratory warmth.
With so much death flying around them, so many lives ended in a maelstrom of violence, the fact that she had survived through it all and still stood by a man that fought with every ounce of his being to be better than any of the other boys that had harassed her over the years had encouraged certain portions of her anatomy to make their desires more…noticeable. She honestly believed that if it were any other man standing there that she wouldn't have done what she was now doing. That she was only doing this because Shinji Ikari was, in more than one way, very special.
Shinji Ikari was a weak man, in certain ways. One of his greatest weaknesses revolved around a complete lack of any sort of knowledge regarding how the female half of the population worked, leading to a total capitulation to whatever it was they asked of him in order to expedite extricating himself from whatever situation they landed him in. Half of his mind was screaming at him that what he was doing was not appropriate in any form or fashion, another half of his mind was howling for him to finally bull his way through that threshold so that the status quo could be amended. A third half of his mind, creating itself from the mathematical chaos it belonged to, whispered insidiously that by choosing Rei he was going to be making a mistake he could never unmake and that he really ought to stop and ask her the question he was going to ask her.
Rei Hino, being a neophyte in the sensual arts, mistook Shinji's halting break of their kiss as a signal that things were ready to be advanced beyond standing around smashing lips together. "I really hope that you know how to get me out of this thing," she joked, laughing breathily and gesturing along the form-fitting crystalline plugsuit she was wearing, "because I've tried several times and it's not moving."
"I-I, uh…yeah, I…." Reflexively, he reached for the wrist that held the control system for the plugsuits he was familiar with. Effect preceded cause in his mind and he realized exactly what would happen if he managed to find and hit the button that would set the suit to loosening its constricting bio-electric field. "Uhm…I…I don't think you're wearing anything under that," he half-questioned, his face already bright red from the kiss.
"An excellent point." Her attempt at making the statement seductive didn't match with what she'd believed it should sound like, coming across to her as far more sarcastic than she'd intended it to be instead of alluring. Overcompensating for the damage she believed she'd done to her own cause, she grabbed Shinji by the hand and dragged him towards her bedroom in the detached apartment away from The Tree. "Let's make sure that I'm not out here when that happens. They're great women, but I'm not quite ready to be an exhibitionist yet."
With control over his actions devolved to another person's guidance, a state of affairs that was normal for him, he implemented the standard protocols of not saying anything because whatever it was that he was going to say was probably not what the person taking him somewhere wanted to hear. It was when he stumbled into her bedroom, tripping over a picture frame that had fallen off the wall again, that he sent another signal he hadn't intended to send. His larger mass tackled her lighter frame onto her bed, whereupon he found his lips once more engaged in battle against hers.
To Rei, it was just a signal that he was as eager as she was to…do those things that men and women did with one another. Her brow knit in frustration as she recognized that she couldn't even mentally vocalize to herself the concept of frantic fornication. But that was fine. She could fix that. Using her experience wrestling with the other Sailors, and causing herself a pang of fresh grief while thinking of them, she leveraged Shinji so that she was now atop him. Lifting her upper torso up, she looked down at him triumphantly and teased, "Now that I have you prisoner, I need you to uncuff me." She looked at the wrist he'd gone for, seeing the control bracelet and puzzling at it. "Is…it one of these buttons?"
"The large round one, hold it down for a second." The instructions were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and as she complied he spit out the question he was actually going to be asking. "I…wanted to ask what their Usagi told you." Just as he reached the word 'Usagi', the Crystalline plugsuit dissolved from view, leaving behind only an ornate ruby bracelet that was fitted snugly to her wrist.
Nude, save for the bracelet, and pinning Shinji to the bed by sitting on him, Rei put together the chain of events that led them to where they were and realized that she had miscalculated, due to heightened emotions, what it was that he had approached her for. Her mind was busy berating her for being stupid enough to think that he would initiate anything, that he would even dream of approaching her and asking if she'd like to engage in a little slap-and-tickle. Mechanically, she swung herself off of him and attempted to use the power in her pen-wand to dress herself again. Instead of the pen-wand, the bracelet responded and adorned her in a pink t-shirt and red overalls. With her back to him, in a vain attempt at recovering any sort of poise or dignity, she shrugged her shoulders. "Just that I needed to make sure to do what I could to help you not be overwhelmed by the power you have."
It was at that moment, Shinji managed to put together how what he said could be interpreted by the woman that was just about to shove him through 'the door to human sexuality'. "R-Rei I-I-"
Her head drooped slightly, her body language closing off completely. "I think I need to lie down for a bit. If you would let the others know that I'll see them for breakfast tomorrow." She could feel him about to speak, and cut him off to save him from her own mistakes. "Thank you, Shinji. I'll see you tomorrow." After he silently exited the room, gifting her the solitude she needed, she sat back down heavily on her bed and began to weep anew. Too much, too often, and now she felt so incredibly alone amongst the survivors of global genocide.
+++++ Hikawa Shrine. (Friday + 27)
Shinji did not, as requested, go and inform anyone of what Rei was doing. He, instead, put his anger at himself, his frustrations with himself, and his disgust with how he couldn't seem to avoid hurting anyone into making the Shrine better, safer, and more comforting for everyone within it. The walls around the entire complex were no longer merely functional, but decorated and filled with life. Flowers, vines, and mosses that helped hold the stone and metal together while also relieving the drab aura of restraint the walls themselves exuded. Trees sprouted where the Kodama's grove had once stood. Proud and tall, the wide array of species provided a medley of scents and sights to behold and walk around.
He could feel the agony spreading outwards from his gut. He was using far too much power, doing far too much at once, and his body was suffering for it. He, however, refused to stop. The women that were left deserved so much more than he was giving them. They deserved to enjoy what life they had. Deserved to make their own choices. Deserved someone better than him!
Ripping open a portal, he stepped through and slammed it shut behind him as his feet moved from stone and dirt to sand and rock. The beach he stalked along was growing dark as the sun traveled westward, already settled below the Asian continental horizon. The waves roared, the wind howled, as an early evening squall battered the Pacific Japanese Coast. Whether heightened by his mood, or responsible for the darkening of his perspective, storm and sea pushed him to begin to hurl invectives at himself.
A full-throated assault on his character, his lineage, his actions, his history, every facet of his being was called to account for what he knew, in his heart, was the reason that everything had gone so horribly wrong. An unfortunately placed bit of driftwood found a new home somewhere far to the east of him as he escalated the demonstration of his displeasure from verbal assaults on his own person to physical punishment of himself.
The armlet Usagi had given him began to throb, a signal he missed due to him driving his fists down against the sandy beach. The skin around his knuckles and fingers was becoming lacerated, chunks of flesh being stripped from bone, blood and saltwater mixing with one another. A single, enormous, fin crested out of the waves less than half a kilometer away from where he was. When the pain from his hands grew numb, he switched from punching the sand to smashing it with the flats of his palms. Pain would wash away everything. It had to. It was all he had left.
It was the sudden scent of fish that brought Shinji's defenses up, Unit-01 scraping into place around him. With Apollo's Bow out, an arrow nocked and drawn, he backed rapidly away from the shore as the Angel of Fish, Gaghiel, slowly pushed its bulk up onto the sand. There was no malice in its presence. No drive to destroy anything. Lowering his bow, he tried to make sense of the absolutely bizarre sight before him.
"I've been busy." Naoko Akagi's voice, or more specifically, the Angel-controlled version of Naoko Akagi's voice, spoke with quiet sorrow from beside him. The Angel-Human-Virus was walking, barefoot, on the beach towards him, and when he looked over to her she gestured to Gaghiel. "We've been…misled, by more than just our progenitor. Our place, in this universe, in this reality, is all based on a series of lies from both the First Ancestral Race, and the oppositional branches of life they lived contemporaneously with. I've managed to convince the 'Angels', as you call them, that were native to this universe of the truth that we face. We are not enemies…and we've been set against one another to weaken both of us."
Unit-01's external speakers failed to fully emulate the pain Shinji was in, "Could you choose a different person to look like, please?"
"Of course." With a shimmer and a ripple, she took on the appearance of a youthful newscaster he was familiar with from the television programming back in his own reality. "I…am sorry for your loss. I am uncertain of how to fully convey the different, and complex, topics that simply made no sense to us. The whys and hows of things." Reaching a point equidistant from both Unit-01 and Gaghiel, she gave the former the smile of a woman about to hang for what had been done. "I was tricked into destroying your planet. I was tricked into alienating someone who would have been my most powerful ally. I was made to see an enemy where…." A brief flash of confusion crossed her face, then she shook her head and shrugged. "Where I might have been able to give you love. I can't undo what I've done. I can't…give back the consciousness of the life I've taken. And so I am here to beg you to take the path that I was led away from, in exchange for…for whatever it is you might ask of me."
"…Love? Love?!"
"Yes!" Her shouted answer echoed off the terrain around them. Her voice, once again calm and steady, filled in the silence her shout had created, "I am probably one of the only of my kin that can understand the concept from the perspective a human has. The desire to not harm those that give of themselves to me, the need to protect them, to shelter them, to stop others from harming them. Attempting to speak to anyone not of my kind is challenging for my kin, communicating ideas to such a…foreign entity is almost impossible! They would have a difficult time expressing mathematical concepts, let alone something as esoteric as love or hatred. I am filled with…wretched self-loathing, disgust for everything I've done with the expectation that it was simply life doing what life does. I believed that in order to protect my kin from you, I had to 'win'. I did not realize what 'winning' meant until…recently. My kin had to survive, I was the most capable of creating what they needed to live, I swore an oath to you to protect them! You have to understand me."
Her explanation, as halting and disjointed as it was, gave him the understanding she'd wanted it to…and more. "I…don't really understand love. I've never believed it existed."
"I know." She looked towards Gaghiel, then waved as the creature moved itself back into the water to swim away. "He's going to go back and tell everyone that I've managed to calm you down enough to talk. He was going to sacrifice himself to sate your blood rage if necessary to give me the chance." Her eyes shifted to him. "May I approach you?"
Shinji relaxed, allowing Unit-01 to go back into dormancy. Creating a pair of chairs out of the sand beneath his feet, he took one and offered the other to his conversational partner. "You caught me at a good time, I guess. I'm too tired to kill you."
"I doubt that." Shifting what she was wearing to a one-piece swimsuit, under a broad straw hat, she accepted his offer and took her seat. "Were I human, I'd be freezing in this. I'm surprised you don't feel cold, considering where we're originally from."
"I haven't felt heat, or cold, for a while now. I'm…numb to it."
"It would be unfortunate if the two strains of life native to this universe that exist within you were weak to such things as mild temperature differences in their environment." Crossing her legs at the knee, she began bouncing one foot idly. "I would like to strike a bargain with you, to replace the oath I've already sworn to you."
He sighed, letting his head fall back against the backrest on the chair he'd created. "I release you from your oath, in all ways conceivably possible. You owe me nothing, anymore. You did win. I have…nothing left to lose."
"…I do not understand you."
"You," he gestured to her, "oath, free. No have debt. No have obligation. I'm not going to decide your future for you, you have to choose that for yourself. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of hurting everyone. I'm…I'm just tired."
She considered him for a time, contemplating what she would say and how it would be received. "Are you amenable to a new accord between us?"
"Whatever."
"Most of my direct kin, those that travelled from our home reality to this one, have accepted the offer of an incredibly powerful entity to move to a distant system. They will not have to worry about harming indigenous life on the planets they will inhabit, and they will be defending this system of planets from afar by preventing a war between advanced civilizations from escalating out of control. I have already bargained for the remaining Angels native to this reality to receive similar passage to another planetary system, where they will be able to support my kin. The price I've paid is to be left behind."
Shinji frowned, confused. "Why?"
"Because I currently consist of most of the non-plant-based matter native to this planet." She gestured towards him with her toes. "Other than those at your home, and you, if it was once what you knew as 'fauna', it's a part of me. If I leave, I'm stealing whatever small chance we have of restoring non-plant life to this planet without tainting it irrevocably with your genetic markers. Predicating life entirely on one strain of nucleotides is only setting it up for future failure when a wild pathogen wipes you out."
His mouth opened to snap at her that she'd know about a 'wild pathogen' destroying all life, then clacked shut when he realized that she knew what he was going to say already. "So what do you want from me?"
"Several things, but it's going to be over a long period of time. Right now, I want you to agree to…aggressive pharmaceutical intervention." She held up a hand when his eyebrows knotted. "Neither created nor prescribed by me. You have, back at your home, a creature capable of producing and introducing chemical compounds directly into your bloodstream that are capable of bypassing the blood-brain barrier. I want you to ask her, politely, if she would consider coming with you to meet me so that I can share the knowledge I've aggregated from the life I've absorbed. In exchange for you doing this, I will share every resource in my possession that touches on the concept of love. I will make myself available at any time, at any location, for you to debate the existence, and the impact, of love."
"…How are you gaining anything from this?"
"One, I get to continue living long enough to replace what I've destroyed. Two, I will be given a chance to talk to you and help you understand why my kind does not deserve to be destroyed once you attain your full power. Three, I get to learn more about what it is that you are by exposure to your presence." Her mouth quirked off to one side, and she looked away towards the ocean. "There are a few other things I will gain, if this is successful, but those won't result in any negative consequences whatsoever for you or those under your protection."
"I'm not going to agree to something when you're clearly hiding something from me."
"I'm not going to tell you everything, because a lady is owed the privacy of her thoughts regardless of the crimes she has committed," she retorted.
The way she referred to herself as 'a lady', and the humanity she was demonstrating in doing so, caused him to reassess what he was seeing before him. "…I want you to swear under the Laws that you will not infect anyone at the Shrine, and that you will protect them to the best of your ability."
"I hereby swear under the Laws that I will not alter anyone under the protection of Shinji Ikari without their consent, and that I will make every reasonable effort to ensure their safety." She wagged her finger side to side. "Specificity is essential when swearing oaths under these Laws. I cannot guarantee their safety, nor can I protect them to 'the best of my ability' without damaging a lot of other things. The degree of reasonability in play in any particular situation will dictate what I do and do not do. I could 'infect', as you put it, something that would result in an explosion which would destroy precious artifacts. I believe you would want me to use my best judgement as to whether to protect them from a minor scrape or keep the Library of Congress in the United States from exploding, yes?"
"Will you swear to tell me the truth? To not play 'word games' with me, like everyone else seems to?"
"I hereby swear under the Laws that I will speak the truth to the best of my knowledge to Shinji Ikari, and to not disguise my intentions by using misleading words or phrases. If I cannot in good conscience do either, I will not speak at all on the matter at hand." She spread her hands. "I believe that balances your desire for building trust between us and my desire to not have my personal thoughts constantly on display for you?"
He hesitated, tracing through everything that she'd said thus far for any sign that he might be walking into a trap. "Once you give me verifiable proof that all of the other Angels are gone…I'll talk to Daphne about meeting you."
"Done, though I was speaking of the Frostmother." She leaned forward, placing the body she was wearing on display in a manner that was just short of provocative as she gestured politely to his hands. "You might want to go see someone about those injuries. They at least need to be cleaned before they heal over the foreign particulates. You don't want to go through the pain you'll feel as your body expels them 'naturally'." What he missed when he looked politely away from her physical display was a brief grin of success crossing her lips.
"Yeah…you're probably right." He groaned as he stood up. "I swear that if you're lying to me, or playing a long con, I don't care what you're made of…your death is going to be memorable."
She stood as well, placing herself directly before him and looking up into his eyes. "And I swear, if you cooperate with me then there will be nothing that is beyond our reach. Not even peace."
+++++ Hikawa Shrine. (Friday + 27)
The Tree was subdued when he walked into the dining area. Sitting at the table was Clare, working on sharpening a knife that likely would slice through tungsten already, and Mizore, staring at a point well beyond any that was contained within the walls around them. Both looked over to see who had entered, and both had similar initial reactions to seeing him: standing up and asking the mostly formulaic, "Are you ok?!" A quick glance at each other, and they moved around the chairs between them and him as one.
Mizore took his right hand and began inspecting it while Clare brushed his hair out of his eyes and checked them for consistent pupil size. "You…don't seem to have a concussion. But you look like you've been through hell, and you smell…like the beach?"
"Which would explain the sand in your joints," Mizore chided him. "Let's go wash this out…this is going to hurt you."
Clare growled slightly as she turned Shinji about and pushed him towards the sink. "I'm going to hurt him. Where did you go?"
He scowled at her. "To clear my head."
"By breaking your hands?" Giving Mizore charge over his hands, she hugged him from the side. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't…we're all really bad off, Shinji. Please, please, stop hurting yourself. Just come to me, if you can't talk to anyone else. I'm used to having someone rant and rave around me. Chris does…did it all the time. I don't mind being your sounding board, and I'm not going to lose my temper if I'm the reason you're upset either. Let me help you, please!"
"I…." He began to crumple inwards, not wanting to place his pathetic issues onto someone who'd just lost their family and experienced being buried alive. A sudden, searing, pain as MIzore compressed two bones together snapped him out of that enough to turn his eyes to her. The anger and hurt he saw in her as she kept her eyes on his hands and the sanitization thereof reminded him that Clare was not the only person to have told him that he needed to talk more, not less. "I messed up…earlier."
"From what Daphne told me, you were trying to track down these Crystals," Clare engaged, trying to coax more out of him. "That was important, Shinji. None of us blame you for what that bitch did, or at least they'd better not. Yukiko said that if these things ended up in the wrong hands, we'd be in an even deeper world of shit. You can't be everywhere, and she's dead now."
"N-no." He hated how nice it felt to be told that it wasn't his fault, particularly from someone who'd lost family. "I…uhm…." The memory of what the Angel on the beach had said to him reminded him that he couldn't speak about what he'd done without violating Rei's privacy. "I…don't know how to talk about this without hurting someone."
Mizore seemed calmer, with more information to work with. "Can you talk it over with them?"
"Not without making a mess of everything." He was caught between two social strictures, and had no wiggle room that he could see.
"Then talk it over with us, we won't say anything to anyone, and then you can talk it over with her. Let us help you. I swear, my lips will be sealed one hundred percent." Clare patted him on both stomach and back. "She and I can keep each other honest, and this way you'll know who spilled the beans if word gets around."
"Once this is cleaned properly, we will go somewhere else and speak to one another." Mizore shifted the tone from 'asking' to 'telling'. She was done waiting idly while there were things that she could be doing to make things better. "I don't care where, but we'll find some privacy and the three of us will put our heads together on this."
His resistance to the idea was failing already. "What would you want me to do, if you were…them."
"I'd want you to go talk to someone so that you could feel more comfortable coming and talking to me," Clare announced without hesitation. "If you felt you couldn't come talk to me about it without making a mess of everything, like you said, then it's better that you risk embarrassing me by talking to one of the good-hearted women around here than going out and punching rocks. My brother…used to do that. He'd just go find a boulder and start punching the bejeezus out of it. It wasn't healthy, but…I have to admit, it's a male thing to do."
"It's a stupid thing to do." Mizore added, switching to the other hand. "It serves no purpose but to drag out a bad situation."
"I'm sorry." The words were out of his mouth before he could think better of them, delivered in the same tone of voice he'd always used with Asuka back where he'd come from. All of the wind came out of his sails at once, and his emotions collapsed back into the null void that he was familiar with.
Several quiet minutes passed, a silent conversation going between Mizore and Clare based around looks and gestures. Plans were forged, refined, and tempered without a single word having been spoken by either party. The final agreement was that it would be Mizore who took the lead on steering him somewhere he could begin to vent. "How do you know where to create the portals that you use to travel about?"
"Huh?" He briefly surfaced over the sea of depression that was drowning him, the question not one he'd anticipated or repeated in his own mind a million times. "I…I just…open them. I get a sense of where I want to go, and it happens. It's like lifting my leg, or blinking my eyes. I just do it."
"Can you take us to Reliqui?" Her finger swirled between the three of them. "Just to the main entrance."
The path he'd taken with the Triplets came to mind, with Maria and Ritsuko, where he first met Inari. Where he'd spoken to Amaterasu, where he'd lost Hygieia, where Makoto had been taken from them all. "Yeah, I can get us there."
+++++ Reliqui, Roppongi, Japan. (Friday + 27)
The portal closed behind them, after Shinji stepped through to the back alley of the youkai's diplomatic center. Reliqui, as the building was called, was surprisingly intact despite the rest of the area having taken significant damage during the overall collapse of society. Reliving the memories of what felt like both a lifetime and an hour past, Shinji gestured to the doors. "This is where they brought me. Short guy was upset that they didn't use the front entrance. Triplets told him they brought me this way to avoid me killing people. Then I damn near broke his neck because he pulled a gun on Maria. Then I watched Hygieia get dragged away and beaten for daring to try to help me. Then she became the first person bound to me by oath." His fist clenched, joints cracking with tension. "Then she became the first casualty of this insanity seconds before Makoto was killed by Rei."
Clare was deeply perplexed, and side eyed Mizore hard. "Ok, not where I would have come. What the hell, Mizzy?"
"The first step to overcoming trauma is facing it." She blasted the doors open with a wave of ice. "This place hurt him. It hurt me. It hurt Daphne. The constant back-and-forth of international bullshit helmed by a woman whose death also took away Daphne's baby and lover. Why are we here? Because when he hurts his hand breaking something it's at least no great loss."
Shinji mulled the idea over for a few seconds, then nodded in agreement. "I'm sorry for doubting you."
"Don't be. I didn't explain why I chose here because I wanted you to show me, unfiltered, how you felt about this place." The yuki-onna gestured to the entrance. "Let's go find one of the meeting rooms that isn't wrecked." As they moved down the long corridor, checking the rooms as they went, Mizore explained what Reliqui's original purpose was. How it had been intended to unify the warring factions of the youkai, how it was supposed to help yousei integrate into the nigh-xenophobic Japanese culture, how it was meant to help youkai and Elysians settle disputes without resorting to another war. When she found a chamber that looked as if it had been cleaned and prepared, but never used, she waved the others inside. "Instead, a multilateral diplomatic organization designed to foster 'the greater good' became fixated upon a single madwoman's ambitions to ensure Kitsune supremacy."
Shinji found a broom in one corner and began to sweep up the dust and debris that had fallen from the ceiling. "If you get three people together, anywhere, the only thing they'll agree on is one of them is wrong." Pushing everything into a dustpan, he dumped the lot into the trash. "At least, that's what Misato-san told me, once."
"Sounds like a smart individual." Clare found a cloth and began dusting the table and chairs down. "I'm not familiar enough with Japanese names. Lady? Dude?"
"Lady," Mizore took the bedding and tossed it out into the hallway, "her given name." Taking a new set of bedding out of a nearby hidden closet, she began making the bed once more. "Someone I believe I would get along with, if that's how she saw the world."
"You would have." Shinji had a tiny smile blossom at the memory of his time with the lavender-haired tiny titan. "She sucked at diplomacy too."
"That's because diplomacy sucks," Clare declared firmly. "Say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't say anything if you're just going to be mean pointlessly. Anything else is a waste of everyone's time."
"That doesn't work if people can't agree, and can't leave the matter unsettled." With the bed made, Mizore turned around and sat down on the edge of it. "As is likely the case with our current situation. Now, I swear under the Laws that no word of what transpired at the Shrine will pass my lips to any but those in this room." She caught him looking over at her, and smiled serenely. "Speak."
He went back to cleaning. "I…was cleaning up the graves, after we found that Kodama-san and Clare were…alive."
Clare saw him about to become distracted by the topic of her death and resurrection. "Don't get off topic. Why I'm back doesn't matter. I'm back. We're here, you've identified the time this happened, drive on."
Shinji frowned thoughtfully. "You…are back. So is…Willow. I can't just keep calling her Kodama-san, and I don't want to use her actual name until she's comfortable with me doing so. Willow is a good name, and can be what everyone uses. She looks like a willow tree, slight and slender…she's a part of me now, and deserves better than me putting distance between us."
"You were cleaning the graves," Mizore prompted.
"O-oh, yeah…Rei and I were cleaning the graves, and after everything was back in proper order, I called her name a few times but she didn't respond. I…uhm, I figured that maybe she was…sometimes I lose track of time and place. My thoughts…swarm? They just swirl around in my head, piling over the top of whatever it was I was trying to think of and distracting me from where I am and what I'm supposed to be focused on. I thought maybe she was dealing with that, after everything that's happened. So I set my hand on her upper arm, near the shoulder. That's…that's a safe place to touch someone, right?"
"If you're trying to get their attention, and they seem like they're in a fugue state, yeah." Clare nodded encouragingly. "Me personally, I'm going to go ahead and give you permission to touch me wherever you'd like to." Her smile became open, friendly. "Remember what we talked about the other day? Kind of becoming more important for us, I think. I need a physical release, and I think it would do you good to just jump into the deep end and let those of us who're willing to bump uglies with you show you the ropes." She flicked a finger towards Mizore. "If you don't trust me, listen to her. We've just survived a terrible series of events. From what I've been told, we should be mostly safe now that you've killed the bitch who killed my brother, and the man she supposedly worked for. Normally, we'd be celebrating right now. Good guys win, bad guys lose, beers all around. Remember the dead, wish them a good rest in the hereafter, and find your happiness where you can with what's left."
He blinked. "W-wait."
"She is not intimating that we do this right at this moment," MIzore made the attempt at soothing what she thought was the problem, "what she is saying is that it is normal for someone who has just survived a violent encounter to feel a need to enjoy the touch of another that they are partial to."
"…Fuck!" The vehemence with which he spat out the expletive rattled both of the women in the room. The anger that rolled across his face, the darkness that began to coil around him. "Fucking…FUCK!" He buried his face behind both clenched fists. "I'm a fucking idiot."
"Shinji…what's going on with my new favorite guy?" Clare braved the possible danger, trusting the nature of the man she had begun to understand and approaching him to smooth her hands along his ribs. "Talk to me, big guy."
"I think Rei wanted to do what you just said." Anger brought him clarity of speech, "I was going to ask her what the Usagi from the other Shinji's dimension told her, and I started the statement by telling her how fortunate I am to have her around. I didn't want to talk about the other Sailors and make her feel like I…I don't know, like I'd rather they were here and not her! By the time I managed to spit out the next sentence, because telling her that first one felt like I was…I don't know, it felt wrong to tell her that because we had just been through a fight and coming up to her and saying, 'Hey, I really like how you make me feel safer because of how strong you are' makes it sound like I just value her fighting ability and not the way that she looks past the idiot outside of me to see the idiot inside of me and…." He let his head fall back and shouted, once more, "FUCK!"
"She misread your intentions, and tried to find happiness where she could." The situation made sense to Clare, based on how she could see a lot of herself from her teenage years in the prim and proper shrine maiden. "I'm going to assume that, at some point, you attempted to correct her misunderstanding?"
He walked his eyes along the cracks in the ceiling for a time. "Yeah. Part of me wanted to stop when she started kissing me. That's the part that doesn't feel like it's worthy of anything that makes me happy. Another part of me wanted to just…go with it. That's the selfish asshole that I ignore or shout down whenever I can. A third part of me was certain that I was going to be making an enormous mistake if I allowed the situation to continue. That Rei was just going to be hurt, and it would be my fault, and I would ruin everything I've tried to save by going along with it." Freeing himself of Clare, he walked over to the table and sat down heavily on one of the chairs. "When I finally managed to break off the kiss, she used the opportunity to say we should move to her room. She didn't want to engage in exhibitionism. I just…went along, because she knew what she was doing and I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing at the best of times. When we got to her little apartment thing, I tripped. Knocked her over onto the bed, started the kissing again because she thought that I was…worthy of her. Eager. Whatever." He swore silently again, the scene making sense now that he'd been given an outside perspective. "I pushed her up as gently as I could, she asked me how to get her out of the crystalline plugsuit, I answered her before saying anything because, again, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Plugsuit worked like it was supposed to, and there she is, on top of me, naked…absolutely gorgeous, exposed, vulnerable, and like the fucking useless moron I am…I finally spit out the question, 'What did the other Usagi talk to you about?' Fuck." His fist slammed down on the table, shattering it. "I had, with me, a woman that any sane person would feel like they were the luckiest person around to…to have interested in them. Naked. Vulnerable. And I was too fucking stupid to piece together what that question would do to her."
"This might seem as if it isn't entirely germane to the conversation," Mizore began, "but if you would please describe what you think of the Daughter of Farms. Spare no detail, if you would. I believe that she is strong enough to withstand whatever you may summon, verbally."
"Yeah, yeah that makes sense." Clare encouraged Shinji to comply. "Believe me, nothing you say is going to be something I haven't already heard, or thought of, about myself."
When Shinji looked between them, uncertainty and skepticism abundant in his features, Mizore motioned for him to do as she'd asked. "Believe me, this exercise will assist us in helping guide you out of this situation you've stumbled into."
"…Ok…." With a final wary glance at Mizore, he looked over to Clare. "At first I wasn't certain what to think of her. She's…very American. Brash, bold, however it is you want to describe it, she's extremely confident in herself and her abilities. She's not shy about letting others know that, either. She doesn't take orders, but I've found that she does listen to requests. You can see in her eyes the drive to…do whatever needs to be done. She sees the world far differently than I do, but she doesn't dismiss my perspective or viewpoint out of hand as 'nonsense'. She actually listened to me, and encouraged me to listen to her. I wouldn't hesitate to trust her with my life, or the lives of the others I'm responsible for. She may be human, but she's not powerless."
"And physically?"
His attention went back to Mizore. "What do you want me to say?!"
"Describe her physical attributes, as you see them."
"She's…gorgeous? Beautiful? Attractive?"
"You are capable of greater detail, please use your words."
"Her hair is lively. Not just how animated it can be when she's in motion, but the color of it as well. Her skin shows signs of a life lived, even for how young she is. She takes good care of it, but has scars that show she's also not afraid to risk it when necessary. The clothes she wears…amply display her workout regimen, and the natural gifts she received at birth. She doesn't have the…marbleized perfection that Hera had, but if she did it would look wrong on her. Clare isn't meant to look like she's 'perfect', she's meant to look like she looks. Honest, open, boisterous, with compelling eyes and extremely striking legs and hips."
Clare blinked. "Ok…I uh…I stand corrected." Her head tilted to the side slightly. "Do you honestly think that? Everything you just said?"
"He is capable of assessing people and accepting their flaws as simply a part of their life's story. He's spent so long only knowing any other living entities by what he could see from the distance they were kept at that it's almost impossible for him at times to understand why he is the one that others might come to because of how attractive he is." Mizore hooked her finger, asking Shinji to come over to her. When he stood from the chair and reached where she was, she tugged him so that he sat down on the bed and kicked her legs over his lap so that they were keeping him in place. "He is not flirting when he says these things. He's answering the questions put to him in the manner that is expected of him, by him. Honest, truthful, blunt."
"Yeah, which is part of the problem you're facing," Clare expounded, moving over to the bed and climbing up behind him to drape herself over his back. "You don't realize that what you're doing comes across as flirtatious, and your passivity only complicates it because you don't say when you're upset that something's happening."
Using her feet, Mizore hooked one of Shinji's arms and set his hand against one of her calves. "Does what we're doing bother you?"
The feel of Mizore's skin was a powerful reminder to Shinji that he did, in fact, have desires. He remembered well how she looked with no clothing on, and how tantalizing it was when she wore nothing but his shirt for several hours. "I…." His hand slid smoothly across her flesh, the heat from his hand echoing off of the chill of her leg. "I…."
Clare began to kiss his neck, her own hands carefully working on the buttons of the shirt he'd thrown on earlier that day. "That's not a no," her lips touched his ear, her whisper hot and sweet, "but it's not a yes."
He had to swallow twice before speaking, to avoid drooling on himself and everyone else. "Wh-what about e-everyone else? What a-about R-Rei?"
Mizore shifted her weight and moved to sit astride his legs, slowly undoing the robes she preferred in a lingering strip tease. "We could go get them, if you want." The cloth drooped slightly, exposing her shoulders. "I don't mind making this a group effort."
"The more the merrier, I always say," Clare pulled his shirt down, tying it so that it constrained his arms behind him. "We're all going to have to get used to the fact that there's one of you, and seven of us, eventually. Why?" Setting her head sideways on his shoulder, she batted her eyelashes coquettishly. "Are you uninterested in us?"
The pathways he saw, from time to time, extended outwards before his mind. He had reached a point where decisions had to be made, where they couldn't be put off any longer. One path had him holding Rei as she wept, rocking her slowly back and forth as she expelled pain and sadness from her heart. Another path had the three of them standing in front of a massive fort, looking at the foreboding entrance and preparing to assault whatever lay within. A third had him sitting next to a vehicle, working on fixing a broken tire while Mizore held the frame off the ground and Clare kept an umbrella over their heads to keep the rain off them. The fourth, and by far most worrying, had him kneeling before Usagi with his head bowed and neck offered for the headsman's axe. Sucking in a sudden breath as reality demanded he choose, he felt the back of his neck begin to scream with agony where the Crystal had embedded itself. He had to choose, and with the options unclear he flailed towards the path that made the most sense to him, a green glow growing grimly against his skin.
Mizore reacted instinctively, her youkai nature responding to an Elder in desperate need of assistance. Had she been offered the choice under calmer circumstances, she would have hesitated to do what she now did under less calm circumstances. Grasping the greenish Crystal on the necklace he wore, she ripped it free from where it had been bound and pushed it against her sternum. This resulted in yet another crystalline plugsuit adorning yet another woman, and a backblast that moved them on a path towards the scene Shinji had selected.
+++++ Hikawa Shrine. (Saturday + 28)
Mizore's arrival back at the Shrine, an unconscious Shinji in tow, was best described as 'disastrous'. Riding a tidal wave of snow, she landed outside the gates, which she promptly kicked open. Storming towards Rei's apartment, she shouted out loud enough for fictional people that might have been standing in Korea to hear, "Child of Snow, you had better not be where I can find you!" Her arrival at Rei's door was fortuitously timed with the Sailor throwing it open and moving to discover what was happening, only for Mizore to shove Shinji into her arms and push both back into the dwelling. "At least our colors appear to be complementary. If you would be an absolute treasure and make sure he remains breathing, I have a midget to kill."
"Wait, whoa," Rei had been awoken far too quickly, and her brain wasn't processing as fast as she'd preferred it to, "what happened? Why is…. How is he so light?"
"I can't say, swore an oath not to. The Daughter of Farms is dead, again, as she was supposed to be apparently. This time, though, I got to be the one responsible for it. It's a really long story, and right now I need to find and murder 'Yukiko', or at least verify that she is not in the Shrine." Slamming the door behind her as she stormed out, she left a thoroughly confused and worried Sailor holding a completely unconscious and battered Elder.
Daphne had dressed herself in greenery, forgoing clothing in her haste to be prepared to fight if necessary. Gliding across the stones that made up the Shrine's main thoroughfare, she fell in beside Mizore as she reached her. "Frostmother, I'm assuming we are not under attack?"
"Nope. 'Yukiko' is, when I find her." Her pace never faltered on her way back to The Tree. "How sturdy is your bondmate?"
"She can withstand most anything he might throw at it, save for the most extreme of environments that he might be able to summon. Does that fetching outfit come with capabilities that match his own?"
"Don't know. Might need to find out." Another set of doors, this time leading into the building attached to The Tree, another kick that allowed Mizore entrance.
"F-Frostmother," the Kodama who was now to be known as Willow was waiting off to one side for what she knew was a superior predator, "I looked but could not find the small one. I apologize, as soon as I heard you challenge her I attempted to locate her."
"Well…shit." Robbed of the target of her wrath, Mizore bit down on her tongue as she thought through what she could still accomplish. "I want you to swear, under the Laws, that she didn't restore you to life."
While she stuttered the response, she did not hesitate in answering, "I-I swear upon the groves of my forebears that my connection to the Elder allowed me to reincorporate my branches back to the trunk."
"…Not what I asked for, but I will accept that as a sacred oath." Mizore's hand began to flex in time with Shinji's heartbeat, the connection between them growing stronger. "I am going to find that little bitch, and I am going to test her durability. Damn it!" Turning about, she stormed back out the way she'd entered, bumping into and past Sarah as the blonde hobbled out of her side chamber. "Sorry."
"What's going on?" Sarah leaned against Willow, who helped her walk more smoothly as she trailed after Daphne who was hot on Mizore's heels.
"The Frostmother is challenging the Child of Snows, but the Child is not here to receive her challenge. Whatever has happened is no trifling matter." Willow urged Sarah to not ask further questions with one hand. "We will learn more by listening, I think."
"Where did you go?" Daphne was carefully balancing information-finding with the knowledge that Mizore was a gnat's whisker away from unleashing horrific violence. "Certainly that wouldn't have been part of any oath?"
"Reliqui. I figured that if he lost control of his temper again, the worst that would happen was he reduced that pile of shit to dust." The air around Mizore crackled with electric frost, and without stopping her movement though with a violent throwing motion she launched an enormous chunk of ice over the edge of the wall and up into the horizon. "FUCKING FUCK!" Nothing further was said as she approached Rei's apartment. Once she reached the closed door, she took several deep breaths, closing her eyes and stuffing her anger back where it was supposed to be.
"You have an enviable control over your temper, considering your typical eloquence is rarely indicative of the storm we just witnessed."
Mizore offered Daphne a smile that would freeze the blood of the most stouthearted individual. "Love has always brought out the best in me, I've found. I thought I loved Tsukune…turns out I was wrong. What I did to you Elysians was a gentle snowfall compared to what I did to the woman who killed him. I know I love Shinji…and I'm going to make that bitch suffer far worse than that for what she's just done to him." Schooling her face back to tranquility and smoothing out her hair, she opened the door softly and entered quietly. When Rei looked over to her with a worried frown, she steered the conversation away from things that would just anger her further, "How is he doing?"
"Unconscious. Breathing. His pulse is elevated, though. Either he's having a nightmare or he's hurting." Rei attempted to keep her tone free of the embarrassed anger she was feeling at the moment. "What happened?"
"Following an unplanned visit to the local seaside, where he spent time engaging in amateur geological surveys with nothing but his bare fists, he returned to The Tree bleeding and covered in saltwater and sand. I cleaned up his hands as best I could, to allow the skin and muscle to regrow over the exposed bones, and then took him to Reliqui with the Daughter of Farms so that he would feel comfortable sharing what it was that had prompted his actions. I cannot say what was spoken there, not without being killed for it by the Laws, but after helping him understand himself a little better I attempted to persuade him, with the Daughter of Farms' assistance, to stop being so stubborn about recreational genetic exchanges. He seized up, forced to make a Choice by whatever twisted intelligence is out there fucking with us, and the result of the choice was I became similar to you, and Clare became a fine mist of blood and gore spread out over the nearby thirty meters. Shinji's head was within the damage zone, and as a result stopped existing. Remember when you took the red crystal and went 'fwoosh'? Yeah, I grabbed the green one."
"Damn," Sarah breathed out. "Clare had just-"
"Been resurrected by that flighty cunt," Mizore interrupted, her plugsuit crackling with power suddenly. "She, unlike my cousin, was supposed to be dead. Does any one of you think, for even the slightest instant, that Shinji would only bring one person back to life? And even if, through some bizarre, twisted, demented, logic he did…don't you think it would have been The Queen of the Oceans? He knows he loves her. Not because he'll ever have sex with her, not because he'll grow old with her in his arms…he loves her because he loves her. It's a pure love. A good love. He would pick her over anyone else, I guarantee it."
Rei waved frantically for Mizore to quiet down. "Wait, wait, wait. You're saying he went to the beach and started punching things?"
"The shore, the rocks, the air. His fists showed numerous signs of serious disfiguration, and I was able to sense the storm that he had summoned along with it."
Sarah was not going to be shushed out of the conversation anymore. "What got him so pissed off?"
"That would be the thing I can't speak of." Mizore looked meaningfully towards Rei. "I can tell you that it was entirely self-directed frustration. He did not understand something, did not notice that he had done something, and was hurting himself because he lacks the social awareness that others might have."
Rei's jaw clenched. "I…see."
"We bullied him into speaking to us, because getting him to open up is…challenging. He had intended to apologize for the misunderstanding, I believe, and might have even headed off to do so straightaway. The problem is, of course, that I killed our ally and blew his head apart."
"…Oh."
"Ok." Sarah stood upright, hobbled over to Shinji, and sat down on his chest so that she would be looking Rei directly in the eye. "I've spoken with most of the others around here about this, and I really can't remember ever coming to an agreement with you. Are we going to have a problem sharing him? Beyond the fact that he is literally the only game in town, every woman that's left, all five of us, kind of really think he's a great guy that needs a little help in becoming a complete dreamboat. Whatever happened, and I'm not asking you to tell me so don't get your panties in a bunch, is this going to be indicative of your relationship with him?"
"I-" Rei's mouth clapped shut again, a fresh wave of embarrassment rippling over her. "I do not believe he intended to hurt my feelings. I know that I did not intend to hurt his. He and I…evidently had a serious miscommunication, and despite my…reservations about the idea…so long as nobody monopolizes his time, I think we might be able to come to an understanding."
"Great." She nodded, extending her hand to seal the bargain she was about to offer. "None of us own him, and he gets the final say in who he's spending time with. We come to each other when we have problems, and we try to discuss it before bringing them to him so that he's not stressing out over the stuff that he wouldn't really understand anyway. If we see he's ignoring someone, which will most likely be completely unintentional, we all agree to steer him towards them so nobody is left in the cold. Later today, I'm going to work on building a place where we can go for…what was it you said?" She looked towards MIzore.
"I believe you mean, 'recreational genetic exchanges'," Willow guessed.
"Yep, that. We work through the jealousy in private, amongst ourselves as women, when it happens. But I'll tell you right now, I don't care if any or all of you are there when he and I get going. I'm not going to be shy around everyone with how I feel about him, and I don't want any of you to feel like you have to be all sneaky about how you feel about him either."
Taking her hand, Rei shook it tentatively. "I think I will limit any future 'exchanges' to just him and I for right now." Retrieving her hand, she felt his pulse at his carotid artery again. "It's going to be…awkward."
"Love generally is," Daphne chuckled wryly. "If we understood each other well enough to avoid the awkwardness, everyone would love everyone. But we don't, and so we must work to achieve that understanding." Slipping behind Mizore, she hugged the taller woman close. "It is not your fault, Frostmother. Nor do I hold your moment of pique earlier against you. Anger brings out words that we do not truly wish to say, and neither of us is so perfect that we are on solid enough ground to begrudge one another those moments of heated tempers."
Mizore looked down to the floor, setting one hand over both of Daphne's. "I think it might be best if you simply took your Crystal now, while he's comatose. We can position him so that the least amount of harm is done, and at least stave off another pointless death."
"He has to offer it," she countered. "He has to give us the choice. We have to choose to accept the burdens. I have seen the Moirai in action more than once, and can sense the air of Doom about what has happened. These things always require a catalyst, successful fates are never self-selected."
"It…it might not…." Willow aborted her halting attempt at interjecting something that she'd noticed. Unfortunately, all four other women looked towards her with clear expectations that she continue speaking. "…It might not be wise to push him towards that, right now. He's terrified. Scared choices are never made well, and if it really is a matter of fate…well…the Daughter of Farms is a good example of what comes from disobeying that."
"There is wisdom in your words, young one." Daphne laid her cheek against Mizore's spine, and smiled comfortably over to her youkai counterpart. "Which is why I have not pursued the issue, after learning of what transpired between him and the shrine maiden. It may be that you are to take up that mantle, and my beloved tree was merely a temporary guardian of the Crystal."
"I-I didn't…I mean, n-no, that's n-not-"
"Settle," Sarah cut in hard. "The more you think of yourself as an outsider, or as a hanger-on, the longer it's going to take you to become a full part of our little family. Whoever gets these last few Crystals, gets them. Whatever purpose they're serving, we'll need the strength they provide. For now, I vote that we all pile into Rei's deceptively huge bed and get some shuteye. Having him wake up surrounded by us is going to stop him, hopefully, from freaking the fuck out."
"Seconded," Mizore sighed out.
"…Yeah." Rei nodded, standing up and helping Sarah to her feet. "Everyone just…try to keep hold of him. He needs stability."
"We all do," Daphne agreed encouragingly.