A/N: I've been thinking of branching out, maybe writing something else in addition to everything else I've got going on. Glutton for punishment and all that.
What would you like to see from me? Any requests? Let me know in the comments, along with how you've been finding this latest sprint of chapters.
Can you believe I've done, like, 50,000 words on this fic alone in the past two months? Used to be I could only manage it in short bursts, but here we are.
Thanks for sticking with it.
"Guises," Ruby began, perching on the table. The school outside their makeshift arena began to quiet as the rest of the students filtered into their next classes.
Ikko stared blankly at the door, eyes unfocussed.
"Ikko?"
He made a noise, an automatic response that signalled he wasn't paying attention, no matter how much he wanted to. With the hand hidden by the fold of her arms, she curled her fingers and summoned a single feather. It drifted lazily towards his temple, swirling and spinning as it crossed the room.
The spine nudged into the side of his head. Ikko flinched, snapping out of his reverie and looking her way.
"Guises?" she prompted.
"Right. Yeah, Guises. Sorry."
"Everything okay up there?"
"Yeah. Yeah…" Ikko scratched the back of his neck, sighing another apology. "Guises."
After a long moment spent appraising him, Ruby continued. "Let's review what we know so far. Tsukune showed you how a monster's intent can negatively influence humans. That, and Guises, come from the same pool of magics that most monsters are able to perform."
"Like an instinct?"
"The former is certainly an instinct," Ruby agreed, "Think of it as a natural release of energy in its rawest form. Names for it vary from culture to culture, but two of the most common are yoki, and spirit energy."
He nodded. "Is this the same energy we use for our spells?"
The use of 'we' warmed her. Ruby smiled. "Precisely. A regular human could mix all the ingredients of a masking spell together, perform every step to the same standard, or even better, than we could. But without that last infusion of spirit energy, it would remain a useless bowl of goo."
"Compared to a useful bowl of goo."
"Yeah. Guises are one of the most common forms of taught techniques in monster communities. Next to natural releases of killing intent, and the abilities unique to any given monster, there's no other technique so ubiquitous."
"How does one technique work for every single monster?"
"That's just it," Ruby said, "It's not just one technique. It's a full spread of different things, unique to each monster, designed to adjust the body so that it can be perceived as human."
Ikko hummed. "I'm not sure I follow."
"That's okay. Let's work with an example." Ruby hopped off her perch, striding into the middle of the room. She pulled a grimoire from the thin air at her back, letting it fall open in her outstretched palm. "I'm going to cast some illusion magic, and you're going to reverse engineer a Guise for me."
Ikko furrowed his brow, covering his mouth with one hand and crossing the other arm over his chest. "Go for it."
"Cover your eyes, though. It's going to be easy if you're watching me transform."
Rather than cover them, he turned away.
Ruby turned a couple of pages, and pulled a spell from each. As she worked, he felt the air in the room change. The temperature rose by a couple of degrees, dislodging the musty scent of old wood and varnish from the classroom and its furnishings. "Okay, all set. Turn back."
Ikko did so. Had she not warned him of her plan, he may well have recoiled in fear, but instead his curiosity got the better of him. She now stood head and shoulders above him, her hair longer and twisted into thick, black vines that scraped along the floor. Her arms dangled past her knees with four long, claw-like fingers flexing and twitching erratically. A curved spine hunched her forward, bringing her face back down to about his height, as if it was pulled down by a chain. From the depths of her tangled hair, her eyes glowed a sickly green. Taking another breath, he realised that the rotten smell actually came from her.
"You've really let yourself go," Ikko commented.
"Smooth," Ruby rasped, "Shall we begin?"
He set to work, commenting on each transformation that warped her and walking them backwards. Pretty soon, he had her back to regular height, standing properly with her arms back to normal length. She reworked her hands into having the correct number of digits, though they still twitched and jerked uncontrollably.
"What do we do about the smell?" he asked, "Doesn't matter what we do to your body, if you smell like a corpse we're not going to fool anyone."
"We can either mask it or stifle it," Ruby said, in the same rattling voice as before.
"Which is more efficient?"
"Why?"
He replied, "The goal is to get you looking human, and you're going to have to do that for almost every hour of the day. The less draining it is, the less likely it is to break."
"A solid assumption to make. It's generally easier to mask it than it is to completely erase it."
"Well, if something doesn't smell of anything, that's just as jarring."
"Good, good…" she followed his instructions, replacing the rotten odour with a more pleasant, earthy scent. From there, they rolled back her eyes and her hair, stifling the glow and splitting the vines out into individual strands. They calmed the motion of her hands and, with that, Ikko thought the exercise complete. He took a step back to examine her, but when he did so, he found the final image unsettling.
"I'm missing something."
"Are you?"
"Oh, yeah. Your vocal cords."
She fixed those, but it didn't change the impression the almost-Ruby gave off. Ikko squinted, walking back up to analyse her more closely. "What is it?" she asked, clearly enjoying his confusion.
"You're you, but you're not… you. Something's still off, and I can't tell what."
"Off how?"
"I'm not sure." Ikko murmured. "Can I have a hint?"
"Sure. What is one thing that every human does, every second of every day, without even thinking about it?"
He hummed. Then, without warning, he reached out to take her arm. When she didn't stop him, he turned her wrist to face up and lay two fingers across the veins. "Your heart's not beating."
"Very good!" She revoked that illusion, returning blood and colour to her body.
"And…" he peered more closely at her. "You're not breathing, either."
"Two for two." Her shoulders began to rise and fall as air returned to her lungs. Finally, Ikko could see the woman buried at the core of the transformation.
"There. Human."
"That's a Guise in a nutshell." Ruby answered. She dispersed the final parts of the illusion, which changed nothing except her eyes. They shifted back from sickly green to vivid pink. "We adjusted about ten elements, there, and none of them were particularly simple. You'll recall we had to simulate a heartbeat and breathing, too."
A newfound respect for the work his friends put into restraining their true form burgeoned in him. "I can see why some people might have trouble. And every monster learns how to do this?"
"To varying degrees, yes. I gave you a particularly extreme example to show you how hard it can get."
"Where does it normally fail?"
"Each of those transformations require constant upkeep throughout the day. For a monster like, say, Mizore, the transformations are minor enough that she can maintain them, even in her sleep, for days. Maybe even weeks. The more complex, detailed, or numerous the transformations, the harder it is."
"It's a miracle that Kia only slips on her eyes, is what you're saying."
Ruby nodded. "There's a reason San agreed to train her. She's packing some serious power in that little body."
Ikko concurred with a respectful hum. "So if it's too complex to maintain, it's more likely to fail. Erratic or spiking emotions can cause problems, too. Is there anything else?"
"Injury," Ruby noted, "That could fall under the umbrella of emotions, though. Pain is the disruptive influence."
Ikko scrunched his brow further. "Specific to Honoka, then, which is it? Difficulty of transformation or problems with her focus?"
"From what I understand, it's both. Her awakening was quite traumatic."
"Do all monsters go through a process like that?"
She said, "No. Some monsters are born the way they will always be. Some awaken gradually as their powers and spirit energy mature. Monsters that awaken abruptly are quite rare, and sometimes there's cross-over between species. It's not known why."
"So she's dealing with a difficult Guise and the trauma of… well, I guess having to relive that moment every time she wants to look 'normal'." He framed that word in air quotes. "It'd be a sight easier if they weren't necessary."
"That's the eventual goal." Ruby said, "We're nowhere near it, but… one day, perhaps."
"One day. What can I do to help? What makes casting a Guise easier?"
"Have you ever worked with makeup, Ikko?"
It was his turn to shake his head.
"A quick primer, if you'll excuse the pun."
"That's a pun?"
Ruby sighed. "It must be nice, not having to worry about this."
He grinned, sheepish. "Take it from the top. I'll try to learn."
"With makeup, it's always best to accentuate what you already have, rather than trying to work on a complete transformation. You pick your foundation to complement your natural skin tone, for example."
"Ah…"
"A lot of monsters, especially when they're first starting out, think that the Guise has to be perfect, and try to cover every monstrous element as completely as possible. The best practise is to do just enough."
"How would you apply that to our example?"
"Let's see…"
Ruby opened her grimoire again, and began casting more illusion magic. She replicated the transformation, and explained each step as she applied her interpretation of the Guise. Cover anything that would immediately stand out as unnatural from a distance, such as odd proportions. She restored her hands, shortened her arms, and eased the hunch without completely removing it. She dulled her eyes and transformed her hair, so that it looked like greasy clumps of hair as opposed to thick vines, and stilled the twitching of her fingers. "That's all I'd do at a distance," she said, in her normal voice, "I'd sort my voice if I needed to talk for any extended period of time."
"What about your heartbeat?" Ikko asked, "Or your breathing?"
"So long as I look alive," she said, flushing her skin with colour, "I don't need to worry about the heartbeat unless someone's going to check my pulse. As for my breathing, I'll do the same thing I did last time."
She rolled her shoulders gently up and down, adjusting her posture by millimetres at a time. Ikko clapped his hands together. "You're not actually breathing."
"Exactly. I just practise the motion until it's muscle memory."
"And that's the advice I should take in?"
She released the illusion one last time. "That's the advice you should bear in mind. Don't offer it if she doesn't need it, just know that those are the tips that will help if she's struggling. The most important thing you can do is help her feel comfortable and safe."
Ikko nodded, understanding. As he digested the information, a thought occurred to him. "Ruby."
"Hm?"
"Before we move on. Would it be possible for a monster to adjust a Guise that they're used to?"
She frowned. "Does this have something to do with your spacing out?"
"N-no," he lied. She saw through it, as the twinge of disappointment in her eyes when he spoke hurt more than he could admit, "I just, uh… hypothetically speaking."
"It's possible," she replied, weighing the words carefully, "But you'd be asking that monster to be less of themselves around you. Is that what you want?"
He fidgeted. "No, I guess not…"
She approached him, placing a tender hand on his arm. "It's okay if you don't want to talk to me about it. Just talk to someone, okay?"
"There isn't anyone I can talk to about this," he mumbled, "I wouldn't even know where to start."
Ruby spoke softly. "How you're feeling is normally the best place to begin. With someone you trust."
"I trust you. But…"
She smiled, applying the gentlest pressure to his arm. "You don't need to explain. Shall we move on to some more practical magic?"
A silence possessed him, followed by shame, but Ikko did his best to shake it off. It wouldn't do to lose this opportunity. "Actually, there's something else…"
Kia and Etsuko reclined in the library, each with a book in their laps. Their chosen corner afforded them some privacy, but they knew better than to settle too comfortably, so chose instead to nudge their chairs a little closer together than normal. "I can't believe Ikko's setting us homework," Kia whinged.
"It's not homework if it's voluntary," Etsuko said, in a monotone that sold her concentration, "You agreed to it."
"Wow. Not even a shred of sympathy?"
"Maybe a shred." She admitted, setting her book down on the table. "This isn't getting us anywhere quickly. Have you found anything?"
"Nothing useful," she replied, snapping hers shut, "All we've got are old legends and film reviews to go on."
"Maybe we should find the films. You feel like some B-movie gore schlock?"
"Reading my mind," Kia exhaled, "Not that it'll help us any more than these are."
"We could drag Ikko along. I wonder how he deals with it."
"Oh, that could be fun…"
As they discussed their friend's tolerance for horror, two people rounded the corner. Noticing them, Etsuko tapped Kia on the shoulder. They both sat a little straighter. "Naoko, Nori!"
Called by her name, Naoko sped up. The spring in her step tugged Nori along, making him stumble. "We've been looking for you!"
They exchanged a glance. "Why?"
"You've been acting weird," said Naoko, taking a seat opposite her, "Ever since you got back from summer, you've been real busy."
"Ikko's been doing martial arts," Nori said, "Training. Building muscle."
"And you two are always together, reading or chatting or something."
"We're dating," said Etsuko, matter-of-fact. Kia blushed.
The admission caught Naoko off-guard, and she stumbled through her next words. "O-oh! I'm sorry, I didn't know. But even with that, you guys are… busy. We've not hung out at all."
Kia blinked. "Wait—really?"
Naoko nodded. Once more, Kia looked at Etsuko, who only shrugged. "I hadn't noticed."
"Etsuko!" Kia gasped, "That's awful! Naoko, I'm so sorry, we've just been—well, you guessed it. Busy."
"It's okay," she murmured, sullen in the way she would expect from her friend, not from the bubbly girl herself, "We miss you, that's all."
"Aw…" Kia pouted. "Okay, let's fix that. We'll make time after club, sound good?"
Naoko nodded, seemingly satisfied. "What are you guys researching?"
"Kuchisake-onna…?" Nori mumbled.
"Ack!" Kia snatched the book back. "It's for the culture festival! We're looking into uh, into horror stories we can use for our displays."
"Oh, cool! You've picked what you're doing already?"
Etsuko stepped in. "Not quite—we're trying to find things to get people to vote for it. What are your class doing?"
"We're doing a takoyaki stall!" Naoko said. "We're working with a bunch of the other first-year classes to make a street food alley from the main entrance!"
"Hey, that's great! Who's doing the cooking?"
Before she could answer, they were all of them interrupted by the librarian, who kicked them out with an unceremonious chastisement. At the very least, he let Etsuko and Kia keep the books they'd been studying. As they moved on, Kia dropped Ikko a text to let him know that his evening had been decided for him.
The bell rang. Slumped in one of the chairs, Ikko rubbed his temples.
"That's the end of break," Ruby noted, peering out of the door, "We can take a quick breather before we carry on, if you want."
"Maybe a drink," he answered, "Some water."
"Sure. I'll be right back."
She slipped out, leaving him in silence. The strain of a new kind of magic hurt his brain in an entirely different way, like it was being pulled out through the pores of his skin, but it began to subside the moment they relented from its study. A testament to his increasing strength, he decided.
When he could open his eyes for long enough without feeling like his brain might slide out of his pupils, he checked his phone. A text from Mizore, asking to steal the evening, and one from Kia, cutting the reply he wanted to send short.
Unbidden, thoughts of the night before spiked into sight, causing him to wince. He fumbled his phone, nearly dropping it, before he regained control of himself. Ikko scrunched his eyes and, rather than send the half-hearted response at his fingertips, dialled Mizore instead.
She picked up, in a hushed voice. "Speaking."
"It's me."
"I know."
"Can you talk?"
Somewhere just away from the speaker, a lock clicked. "I can now. What's wrong?"
The realisation that she was on the clock hit Ikko about as hard as the emotion that made him dial. He stuttered. "Nothing. Sorry, I didn't realise the time, uh—I'll text you."
"Free period, you're good. Talk to me."
"I…" Ikko looked at the door. Why had he called her? "I just wanted to hear your voice."
A tiny breath slowed her response. "That's cute, but that can't be the whole reason."
"No, it's… um. I'm hanging out with Kia and the rest after club, so we can't hang out. Is that alright?"
"Yeah, that's fine. I should catch up on my work anyway."
"It's only been a couple of days, and you're behind?"
"Feel free to come find out how bad it is, if you wanna help."
"I-I'm okay, thanks."
"Thought so. How's training?"
"We're just taking a break, but it's fine. Nice to be doing something besides barriers."
"Alright, well, don't overdo it. You've got the rest of the day to go."
"I can take it," Ikko assured, looking up at the ceiling, "Maybe all those hospital trips were worth it in the end. Toughened me up."
"Don't joke about that," she said, despite laughing, "No-one's indestructible."
"Yeah, yeah…"
"Anyway, I should head off." Mizore finished, "This isn't a habit we should get used to."
"Oh. Sure. I'll make sure someone's dying next time."
"You realise how that sounds?"
"I—you know what I meant."
"I do, and I appreciate the thought. Only in hours, though. Call me whenever otherwise."
"Duly noted. I'll…" Ikko trailed off. He was, once more, dragged back to the night before. "Actually, one more thing."
"Hm?"
Though they were alone in their rooms, Ikko found his voice quieting all the same. "Last night."
"Yeah…?"
"We're… good. Right?"
Another pause followed his asking, which Ikko didn't want to read into. "We're good," she breathed, "We'll talk about it later, okay?"
His heart sank. How was he supposed to talk about something he barely understood himself? "Okay. Speak soon."
"Definitely."
She hung up. Ikko lingered on the call window, stopping only when Ruby returned, apologising for the delay, and the lesson continued.
