"Hey there Nitori."
Nitori responded while remaining on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, "Hey."
"You, uh, you want to go for a ride?"
"...K."
Nitori silently sat up, and looked over at Marisa.
"When did you get in my room?"
"I knocked, but no one answered, so I just came in, ze."
Nitori got up, grabbed her backpack out of habit, and made her way outside to get on Marisa's broom, "I don't think I heard you."
"I figured that. You...usually just lay on the floor like that?"
"I just don't know what I'm doing, I guess-where are we going?"
"To a volcano that broke down."
"That usually does not happen."
"That's why I got you."
"That means there's a problem in the core underground of Gensokyo, which means that a lot of ecological disturbances could result."
"Can you fix it?"
"Oh, well, I can take a look."
Nitori knocked on the mansion door, and within a few moments, Rin opened the door. She kept the door only slightly open, afraid of the intruder.
The kappa touched her cap, "You called for repairs on your reactor?"
Komeji put her hand on Rin's shoulder, pulling her aside, "I'll take care of this," she whispered to Rin.
As she opened the door, "Come in."
"The problem is indeed the reactor in the back, follow me."
"Yes, it's actually attached to the crow."
"It probably first started acting up a little more than a week ago."
"It's possible that it could be an issue with Okuu as well, but the two are so part and parcel of the same being that it's hard to tell."
"It's quite a long walk back there."
Komeji gave Nitori a glare, "And yes, mind reading does speed up conversations like these quite often. And yes again, it does make it seem like I'm carrying on the conversation entirely by myself."
Nitori tried to focus her mind blankly for a moment. Although it did speed up the conversation, there was something she didn't quite like about not having her turn to speak, even if Komeji already knew what she was going to say-
"I'm sorry, I'll try to be a bit more patient."
Nitori narrowed her eyes, "Then why didn't you even let me finish that thought?"
"...right."
They came to the reactor door, to which Komeji pointed to, and left Nitori to open it and followed in behind her as they entered. As expected, the interior was of a sweltering heat, despite what help magic could give to the situation (and what discomfort being a kappa added to the situation). Nitori stood by the door and motioned over to Okuu to come over from the core to where she was sitting. Komeji nodded that it was O.K., and while they got situated, Nitori opened up a tacklebox and readied her tools. She sat on a nearby rock and wordlessly patted her lap and motioned to Okuu's firing arm.
Rather than speak, Nitori simply stared at Komeji's third eye.
"For someone who wanted their turn to talk, you suddenly seem eager to not do so anymore," but Komeji noted that Nitori wasn't even listening to the end of her reply. She was already entranced in studying Okuu's arm. Marisa was right about Nitori's nature. Like a switch, the moment a goal had been baited out before her, she became completely and totally entranced and at the same time ignorant to the outside world. Like a philosophical zombie.
Komeji let her be.
It took Nitori a while to even begin to get a basic idea of the general function of the fusion components in the arm. There were also some componets that seemed intrinsically linked to Okuu that Nitori unfortunately had to treat like a black box given the complexity of the system.
Every once in a while, Okuu would writhe around, and Nitori would have to convince her to stay still for just a few moments longer.
The more she tried to break down and just understand the components, the more she got lost, but she did understand one thing.
"There's nothing wrong with your arm."
Okuu nodded, "That's right."
Nitori took some measurements at the various junction points to Okuu's biology to confirm. Whatever the issue was, it lay with Okuu herself.
She finally closed up the panels on Okuu's arm, leaving a few probes connected, and motioned to Okuu that she could stand up. Nitori stay seated, staring at Okuu and shaking her head.
Nitori whispered to herself, "Dammit, Marisa, I'm a mechanic, not a doctor."
Well, if I'm not going to solve this issue, I might as well try to get something meaningful out of this.
"Say, Okuu, let me tell you about a problem I've been having."
Okuu cocked her head, "O...kay?"
She gestured at her tacklebox, "I don't know why I'm doing this," she motioned around herself, "Any of this."
She pointed back at Okuu, "Why do you want to do this job for Komeji?"
Okuu gave Nitori the kind of silly grin a five year old would, "I don't want to do this!"
"You don't want to do this anymore, you mean?"
"I've never wanted to do this! It's hot, and sweaty!"
"Then why are you doing it?"
"Because Komeji wants me to do it."
"So you want to do it because Komeji wants you to?"
"I mean...I guess...?"
"So, is your motivation directly related to Komeji then?"
The crow tilted her head quickly and slightly, "Huh? What are you talking about?"
Nitori gave an irritated sigh, she was asking this to try to help solve HER problem, not Okuu's anymore, "Well, I mean, O.K., how about this, if this isn't what you want to do, what do you want to do?"
She flung up arms up into the air, nearly destroying Nitori's probes, "Oh! Oh! I'd go so many places. There's just no end of neat things I've been dying to do!"
Nitori already lost sight of her original purpose here, instead asking her questions she always wanted to ask, "No, well, I mean, yes, that is what I mean. I mean, what I meant was. Well," she sighed, realizing who she was talking to.
Lifting her head up to meet the bird-brain's gaze she noted, "I suppose you just want to do those things because you've just always wanted to do them, no bigger rhyme or reason, huh?"
Her stupid smile was still plastered on her face, "Yup!"
Nitori slumped back. Now she was slightly depressed because in all of her grandious scheming about how complex Okuu's problem must have been, or anything technically impressive she could have done with the fusion device, she was instead confronted with the reality of how trivial the problem actually was once she realized that she was talking to a bird brain (literally and figuratively), "You just want to have a break."
Okuu gave Nitori a quizzical look.
"But that doesn't explain how you've been able to do this so far. I mean, if this isn't your will, then how have you been doing it?"
Okuu gave Nitori another quizzical look. It was becoming trenchantly obvious that Okuu lived a very straightforward existence.
Nitori frowned, looking at the ground as she thought. Okuu continued to tilt her head quizzically this way and that as Nitori tapped her feet.
Finally, Nitori gave Okuu a menacing glare, "This is so dumb, here, give me your arm," she said, as she grabbed something from her bag.
Okuu complied, and Nitori cartoonishly jammed a switch blindly into her reactor arm and then placed some tape on either end as she wrote, "VACATION ON," on one side, and "VACATION OFF," on the other.
She pointed a finger at Okuu as she explained, "I'm going to turn on this switch, and when I do, you can do whatever you were planning to do. And then, when you need to because of Komeji or your own desires, you just...uhm...turn the vacation off."
Okuu's faced began to light up.
Nitori switched it to "VACATION ON."
Okuu's face nearly exploded with happiness and she ran out of the room, leaving Nitori to pack up. As she did so, she had a stern, solemn face that slowly grew more complacent, until the ridiculousness of the situation hit her. She laughed so hard she nearly came to tears, and then, afterwards, a little bit of pride over a simple-but-stupid solution hit her. After buttoning up her backpack, she swiveled onto her back and looked at the ceiling for a moment before heading out the room herself.
Sometimes I wish I were so simple.
She headed to the mansion entrance, where she met Komeji once more.
"You gave her a vacation, huh?"
Nitori nodded, "Yup,
She grinned, "You think that was really it?"
"I'm positive. This time, at least," Nitori grabbed the door handle.
"And if it happens again?"
She adjusted her cap as she headed out the door, "Well ma'am, if it happens again-"
She paused, reciting the world's most standard tech guide to Komeji as she closed the door behind her, "I'd turn it on, count to two weeks, and turn it back off again."
