Even Out of Battle Mode
by Laly Konstantin
Reincarnations:
Ron - Suboshi
Sean - Amiboshi
Rose - Soi
Seit ?
Natalie ?
Jacob ?
Len ?
_________________________________
He walked up and down the tree-lined streets, trying to find the little park with the stream that he used to visit with his brothers. Some sense of direction I have, he thought.
He really didn't need any more time alone, any more time to think things over. To be completely honest, he was just brooding at this point. Anything he might have thought of to make sense of things, he'd already come up with. It was still a matter of time, and things would settle in his head eventually. Until then, he'd probably be better off finding ways to distract himself. Right?
Well, he thought, nice tree. That's a start - the tree is absolutely fascinating, the way the street light is playing off of it -
-street light? How long had he been out here?
Sean swung his bag over to the other shoulder, and turned steadfastly downhill. It was time to get home. Home was downhill. Simple things, just to keep distracted.
_________________________
Rose couldn't remember where she'd heard it said that events were cowards, and had to run in packs, but her afternoon fit the description perfectly.
She'd stayed around at Seit's house long enough to split a plate of nachos, and to talk vaguely about the situation. That odd situation... she'd begun to doubt her initial certainty, because the more she tried to mull over her memories, the harder they were to call up. Images grew shady, and emotions were completely lost; the facts that stayed with her only helped a little.
If she remembered the way to her room in the Kutou palace, where she'd been hidden away for a few months, she remembered what it was like to feel restless before she'd even stopped moving. When she thought of tents, she remembered how dry the desert was, and how cold the unforgivingly clear sky had made her. When she thought of Nakago - hard to avoid, when she'd spent over an hour face-to-face with Seit - gratitude emerged. Only that. Seit had almost studiously avoided the subject, and she hadn't wished to mention her last recollection from the past life. Not if he didn't remember. It couldn't have meant much to him, in that case.
She could almost say, as a result, that her feelings in this life were and would remain entirely separate from Soi's no matter how much she recalled. Almost; but that decision felt like a loss, somehow.
She'd met up with Ron and that ex-girlfriend of Richard's - Len, that was her name - a few blocks from Seit's house. Len had offered her Fritos, and Ron had asked if she'd talked to Sean yet. No, she hadn't. She should, he'd said. She had shrugged, and commented that it was just a little too complicated right now. He'd responded with an expression that she'd seen several times before, but never quite learned to read. She'd noticed, then, how Len cocked her head to look up at him, and realised that there might be something interesting going on here. For the sake of observation, she continued along with them. It was on the way home, sorta.
Well, home happened to be a nightmare. The furnace was broken, the repairman was a creep, and her mother had blown up over the situation. Somehow, she'd changed the dispute into another reminder that Rose needed to find a job - not soon, but now. Of course, at that Rose had stalked off on her own with the stated purpose of finding one. Tonight.
Then she'd almost been ticketed for jaywalking, which she'd never actually believed would happen to anyone. Between that and her frustration at finding any place that would hire a not-quite-sixteen-year-old, she was about to collapse on any random corner and sulk away the rest of the century.
Well, a good long walk might cool her off. If she walked up to the coffee shop in the King street area, she might find out if they were hiring. Most importantly, however, she probably wouldn't get home until after dark.
____________________
Time flies when you're in training mode. As a result, Len never realised that she'd been at Ron's place for four hours until his sister walked in and informed them that dinner would be ready very, very soon. Len was, she discovered, welcome to stay; however, she should have been home by five-thirty. Period.
How serendipitous that she'd left her cel phone off, so that she'd probably missed the warning call. She wasn't about to switch it on and check...
She left feeling happy, though. Funny how she and Ron had seemed to bond over everything, considering she never would have judged them as similar people. She ran a few possibilities through her head at the bus stop, and as she walked the last few blocks home she had a funny feeling, like pieces coming together.
________________________
It wasn't even a matter of avoidance, Jacob suspected as Seit brought a chair over to the table. Natalie had completely shut her mind away.
Perhaps that was a good thing, for now.
'Was I late?' Seit asked good-naturedly, sitting down and glancing at the menu on the wall just long enough to pretend he was deciding what to drink. 'Everyone seems to be here already. Hello.'
As the others greeted him, Natalie pushed her chair away from the table, took her drink in both hands, and walked away. Not a word about it. As she left, she only paused to hold the door open for the girl coming in; and, Jacob but no one else saw, to send a final glare in their direction.
Seit was occupied in other thoughts. He'd come to a realisation that evening, or so he thought; it had arrived with a new blossoming of memory, but he wasn't exactly planning to tell anyone else about it just yet.
Fortunately, he didn't need to. 'Seit,' Yui began, 'there's something we probably should tell you, and make things clearer.'
'Oh?' he responded impartially.
Yui hesitated. 'It's kind of awkward,' Keisuke supplied in an accent it took him a moment to understand.
'It's important though. It explains a lot,' Yui continued. 'You all knew me before, right? Which only makes sense because I was pulled into your world - I mean, Nakago's world, since you aren't him.' She looked into her coffee, then lifted her head again. 'Basically, the way I found your world was in a book.'
Seit spent the next few moments not understanding. 'You found it in a book?'
'It was written in a book,' Tetsuya added. 'Like a novel.'
'You were characters in the book,' Yui said, a little too fast. 'Nakago knew that, but if you don't remember yet, maybe it helps to know.'
Seit's first thought was that he needed a few quiet minutes to think. So, of course, it was the natural moment for Soi to arrive.
Jacob watched Rose's face sort of light up as she caught sight of them. Immediately after that, he saw a pair of arms appear around her neck in a surprise hug. Rose squealed a little in surprise, and turned to see the head that appeared over her shoulder. 'Len!' she shrieked.
A long-lost friend? he wondered. Or maybe...
After they'd greeted each other a little less shrilly, Rose turned back to Jacob's group. 'You guys, this is Len. Len, do you know Seit from school?'
'I've seen him,' Len commented agreeably.
'The others are Jacob - the white guy -' Rose freed her left arm to point - 'Keisuke, Yui, and...' she buried her face in Len's shoulder. 'I don't remember.'
'Tetsuya,' Yui, Jacob, and Keisuke supplied in unison, before the guy thus named could open his mouth.
At this point, Rose and Len became aware that they were blocking traffic in the middle of the coffee shop, and moved over to pull chairs up to the table.
Thus, Len wound up hearing a short version of the story, asking who else was 'a reincarnation,' and getting a little too fascinated for the others' comfort. Yui was secretly hoping that it would trigger something in her, but she was sorely disappointed. She did seem to grasp the book concept more readily than Seit had, at the same time Rose seemed to be absorbing the shock of a not-quite upsetting development.
Keisuke managed to fit in a few inquiries as to how Rose was handling it. 'Are you okay?' earned a nod, and 'We tried to tell Seit more gently, but... um, things start happening...' actually won a sympathetic smile from the girl.
'You're being pretty respectful to the book's antagonists,' she commented a few moments later, startling him.
He had to think that over for a minute. 'Things start to happen, and it's just hard to hold grudges,' he finally justified. He'd gotten over any antagonism toward any 'characters' a long time ago, before he'd even realised it; so he couldn't really call anything up to make him angry now. Another world. Everything had ended well, after all. Considering that, he cast a glance at Tetsuya, then gestured to him from behind his coffee. 'He's the one who's handling it well. He was so pissed when you first turned up...'
'Me?' Rose asked, but he only shook his head before nodding back toward the main conversation. Seit and Len had apparently fallen into a lively debate, moderated by Jacob's dry humour and occasional correction of facts that neither of them had any way of knowing in the first place. Meanwhile, Yui had leaned over to talk to Tetsuya. 'She's involved too,' she whispered in Japanese. 'There's a connection. I think she's the last one.'
'The last one? Isn't that six?' he responded. Her eyes widened, and she shook her head, but didn't think she could say anything else right now. Not only was she now facing Nakago and an expressive combination of Miaka and Soi, but she also had to look into the strange eyes of the new girl. Glowing, almost gold, and there was almost no question in her mind. Yes, this girl was completely human, but... it was funny. For the first time, Yui realised, she was recognising her seishi before the seishi itself - well, herself - had any idea.
She could hardly have recognised her seishi Ashitare, so why was it so easy to see him now?
At the same time, she realised that she'd readily accepted that Natalie was one of them after the odd exchange between her and Jacob. She managed to make a mental note to ask him about it later, before the others intruded on her overtime thoughts and called her back to the conversation at hand.
'Oh, shit. I really need to get home,' Len finally realised in the midst of a comfortable break in conversation. 'I was just going to buy something and get going.' She gave Rose a quick hug, and bid the others goodbye, saying it had been great to meet them. 'Call me next time you're going out.'
Tetsuya shook his head after she left, and said something in Japanese that prompted Yui to give him a funny look.
'What did he say?' Rose asked Keisuke, just as Seit had been ready to ask.
Keisuke shook his head, more interested in hearing out the conversation that continued - much to their frustration - in Japanese.
'He said something about that girl looking like Yui,' Jacob finally surrendered. 'Changing to look like her.'
Then, the composed man who was showing himself to be such a good host so far slapped his forehead violently, stood up from the table, and stared at the now-motionless door.
Five of them had been in that coffee shop that night, but never all together at the same time. So close, and it had only occurred to him now?
The gathering dissolved in the next fifteen minutes, as though his realisation had stolen its momentum; but he was going to get this right, he decided, and it was going to happen in the next few days. This wouldn't be like last time.
They had missed a crucial part of their destiny, and had been very close to fulfilling it in the natural order of things... all, except him.
Why? he asked himself. More importantly: if he'd known from the beginning that they were all together, and that he was the single isolated case, would he have even tried to find them?
He'd wanted so badly to be the leader last time, and circumstance screwed him over. This time, he thought, we're finally all together. The idea swelled to block out the goodbyes and the drive home so completely that, as he fell asleep, he realised that he'd missed the most important question it imposed:
Why the hell should he care?
________________________
AN: This story does not seem to remember who's supposed to be in control of it, here...
by Laly Konstantin
Reincarnations:
Ron - Suboshi
Sean - Amiboshi
Rose - Soi
Seit ?
Natalie ?
Jacob ?
Len ?
_________________________________
He walked up and down the tree-lined streets, trying to find the little park with the stream that he used to visit with his brothers. Some sense of direction I have, he thought.
He really didn't need any more time alone, any more time to think things over. To be completely honest, he was just brooding at this point. Anything he might have thought of to make sense of things, he'd already come up with. It was still a matter of time, and things would settle in his head eventually. Until then, he'd probably be better off finding ways to distract himself. Right?
Well, he thought, nice tree. That's a start - the tree is absolutely fascinating, the way the street light is playing off of it -
-street light? How long had he been out here?
Sean swung his bag over to the other shoulder, and turned steadfastly downhill. It was time to get home. Home was downhill. Simple things, just to keep distracted.
_________________________
Rose couldn't remember where she'd heard it said that events were cowards, and had to run in packs, but her afternoon fit the description perfectly.
She'd stayed around at Seit's house long enough to split a plate of nachos, and to talk vaguely about the situation. That odd situation... she'd begun to doubt her initial certainty, because the more she tried to mull over her memories, the harder they were to call up. Images grew shady, and emotions were completely lost; the facts that stayed with her only helped a little.
If she remembered the way to her room in the Kutou palace, where she'd been hidden away for a few months, she remembered what it was like to feel restless before she'd even stopped moving. When she thought of tents, she remembered how dry the desert was, and how cold the unforgivingly clear sky had made her. When she thought of Nakago - hard to avoid, when she'd spent over an hour face-to-face with Seit - gratitude emerged. Only that. Seit had almost studiously avoided the subject, and she hadn't wished to mention her last recollection from the past life. Not if he didn't remember. It couldn't have meant much to him, in that case.
She could almost say, as a result, that her feelings in this life were and would remain entirely separate from Soi's no matter how much she recalled. Almost; but that decision felt like a loss, somehow.
She'd met up with Ron and that ex-girlfriend of Richard's - Len, that was her name - a few blocks from Seit's house. Len had offered her Fritos, and Ron had asked if she'd talked to Sean yet. No, she hadn't. She should, he'd said. She had shrugged, and commented that it was just a little too complicated right now. He'd responded with an expression that she'd seen several times before, but never quite learned to read. She'd noticed, then, how Len cocked her head to look up at him, and realised that there might be something interesting going on here. For the sake of observation, she continued along with them. It was on the way home, sorta.
Well, home happened to be a nightmare. The furnace was broken, the repairman was a creep, and her mother had blown up over the situation. Somehow, she'd changed the dispute into another reminder that Rose needed to find a job - not soon, but now. Of course, at that Rose had stalked off on her own with the stated purpose of finding one. Tonight.
Then she'd almost been ticketed for jaywalking, which she'd never actually believed would happen to anyone. Between that and her frustration at finding any place that would hire a not-quite-sixteen-year-old, she was about to collapse on any random corner and sulk away the rest of the century.
Well, a good long walk might cool her off. If she walked up to the coffee shop in the King street area, she might find out if they were hiring. Most importantly, however, she probably wouldn't get home until after dark.
____________________
Time flies when you're in training mode. As a result, Len never realised that she'd been at Ron's place for four hours until his sister walked in and informed them that dinner would be ready very, very soon. Len was, she discovered, welcome to stay; however, she should have been home by five-thirty. Period.
How serendipitous that she'd left her cel phone off, so that she'd probably missed the warning call. She wasn't about to switch it on and check...
She left feeling happy, though. Funny how she and Ron had seemed to bond over everything, considering she never would have judged them as similar people. She ran a few possibilities through her head at the bus stop, and as she walked the last few blocks home she had a funny feeling, like pieces coming together.
________________________
It wasn't even a matter of avoidance, Jacob suspected as Seit brought a chair over to the table. Natalie had completely shut her mind away.
Perhaps that was a good thing, for now.
'Was I late?' Seit asked good-naturedly, sitting down and glancing at the menu on the wall just long enough to pretend he was deciding what to drink. 'Everyone seems to be here already. Hello.'
As the others greeted him, Natalie pushed her chair away from the table, took her drink in both hands, and walked away. Not a word about it. As she left, she only paused to hold the door open for the girl coming in; and, Jacob but no one else saw, to send a final glare in their direction.
Seit was occupied in other thoughts. He'd come to a realisation that evening, or so he thought; it had arrived with a new blossoming of memory, but he wasn't exactly planning to tell anyone else about it just yet.
Fortunately, he didn't need to. 'Seit,' Yui began, 'there's something we probably should tell you, and make things clearer.'
'Oh?' he responded impartially.
Yui hesitated. 'It's kind of awkward,' Keisuke supplied in an accent it took him a moment to understand.
'It's important though. It explains a lot,' Yui continued. 'You all knew me before, right? Which only makes sense because I was pulled into your world - I mean, Nakago's world, since you aren't him.' She looked into her coffee, then lifted her head again. 'Basically, the way I found your world was in a book.'
Seit spent the next few moments not understanding. 'You found it in a book?'
'It was written in a book,' Tetsuya added. 'Like a novel.'
'You were characters in the book,' Yui said, a little too fast. 'Nakago knew that, but if you don't remember yet, maybe it helps to know.'
Seit's first thought was that he needed a few quiet minutes to think. So, of course, it was the natural moment for Soi to arrive.
Jacob watched Rose's face sort of light up as she caught sight of them. Immediately after that, he saw a pair of arms appear around her neck in a surprise hug. Rose squealed a little in surprise, and turned to see the head that appeared over her shoulder. 'Len!' she shrieked.
A long-lost friend? he wondered. Or maybe...
After they'd greeted each other a little less shrilly, Rose turned back to Jacob's group. 'You guys, this is Len. Len, do you know Seit from school?'
'I've seen him,' Len commented agreeably.
'The others are Jacob - the white guy -' Rose freed her left arm to point - 'Keisuke, Yui, and...' she buried her face in Len's shoulder. 'I don't remember.'
'Tetsuya,' Yui, Jacob, and Keisuke supplied in unison, before the guy thus named could open his mouth.
At this point, Rose and Len became aware that they were blocking traffic in the middle of the coffee shop, and moved over to pull chairs up to the table.
Thus, Len wound up hearing a short version of the story, asking who else was 'a reincarnation,' and getting a little too fascinated for the others' comfort. Yui was secretly hoping that it would trigger something in her, but she was sorely disappointed. She did seem to grasp the book concept more readily than Seit had, at the same time Rose seemed to be absorbing the shock of a not-quite upsetting development.
Keisuke managed to fit in a few inquiries as to how Rose was handling it. 'Are you okay?' earned a nod, and 'We tried to tell Seit more gently, but... um, things start happening...' actually won a sympathetic smile from the girl.
'You're being pretty respectful to the book's antagonists,' she commented a few moments later, startling him.
He had to think that over for a minute. 'Things start to happen, and it's just hard to hold grudges,' he finally justified. He'd gotten over any antagonism toward any 'characters' a long time ago, before he'd even realised it; so he couldn't really call anything up to make him angry now. Another world. Everything had ended well, after all. Considering that, he cast a glance at Tetsuya, then gestured to him from behind his coffee. 'He's the one who's handling it well. He was so pissed when you first turned up...'
'Me?' Rose asked, but he only shook his head before nodding back toward the main conversation. Seit and Len had apparently fallen into a lively debate, moderated by Jacob's dry humour and occasional correction of facts that neither of them had any way of knowing in the first place. Meanwhile, Yui had leaned over to talk to Tetsuya. 'She's involved too,' she whispered in Japanese. 'There's a connection. I think she's the last one.'
'The last one? Isn't that six?' he responded. Her eyes widened, and she shook her head, but didn't think she could say anything else right now. Not only was she now facing Nakago and an expressive combination of Miaka and Soi, but she also had to look into the strange eyes of the new girl. Glowing, almost gold, and there was almost no question in her mind. Yes, this girl was completely human, but... it was funny. For the first time, Yui realised, she was recognising her seishi before the seishi itself - well, herself - had any idea.
She could hardly have recognised her seishi Ashitare, so why was it so easy to see him now?
At the same time, she realised that she'd readily accepted that Natalie was one of them after the odd exchange between her and Jacob. She managed to make a mental note to ask him about it later, before the others intruded on her overtime thoughts and called her back to the conversation at hand.
'Oh, shit. I really need to get home,' Len finally realised in the midst of a comfortable break in conversation. 'I was just going to buy something and get going.' She gave Rose a quick hug, and bid the others goodbye, saying it had been great to meet them. 'Call me next time you're going out.'
Tetsuya shook his head after she left, and said something in Japanese that prompted Yui to give him a funny look.
'What did he say?' Rose asked Keisuke, just as Seit had been ready to ask.
Keisuke shook his head, more interested in hearing out the conversation that continued - much to their frustration - in Japanese.
'He said something about that girl looking like Yui,' Jacob finally surrendered. 'Changing to look like her.'
Then, the composed man who was showing himself to be such a good host so far slapped his forehead violently, stood up from the table, and stared at the now-motionless door.
Five of them had been in that coffee shop that night, but never all together at the same time. So close, and it had only occurred to him now?
The gathering dissolved in the next fifteen minutes, as though his realisation had stolen its momentum; but he was going to get this right, he decided, and it was going to happen in the next few days. This wouldn't be like last time.
They had missed a crucial part of their destiny, and had been very close to fulfilling it in the natural order of things... all, except him.
Why? he asked himself. More importantly: if he'd known from the beginning that they were all together, and that he was the single isolated case, would he have even tried to find them?
He'd wanted so badly to be the leader last time, and circumstance screwed him over. This time, he thought, we're finally all together. The idea swelled to block out the goodbyes and the drive home so completely that, as he fell asleep, he realised that he'd missed the most important question it imposed:
Why the hell should he care?
________________________
AN: This story does not seem to remember who's supposed to be in control of it, here...