"And you're sure she'll be okay?"

Who said that?

"She should recover soon enough. It'll just be a matter of time."

Why did her head hurt so much?

"That's good."

What's good?

"Hey… It's not your fault."

The sound of restrained emotion reached her senses.

"I should have listened to you… If I had listened she wouldn't have–"

Huh?

"If you had listened to me, then she would have just done the same thing somewhere else. You know she would."

Was that… Roland? Were they talking about her?

"Yeah but… Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad…"

Evan? Yeah, it probably wasn't his fault.

"So… Why isn't she awake yet?"

Hmm… Tani? She was awake!

"She'll wake up when she's ready or until her head heals enough to let her."

Wasn't she awake?

"Cheer up, lad! She'll be fine!"

That must be Batu. Who are they talking about? She wanted to know!

"Hmm? It looks like she's listening."

Of course she was listening. They were right beside her. Now if her eye lids didn't feel like the whole of Broadleaf had been built on top of them, she would see what was going on.

"Is she? Bracken? Say something!"

How do you speak again? Hmm…

A small noise of discomfort managed to squeeze its way passed her otherwise sealed lips, and suddenly everything came crashing down on her. Pain exploded in her side, her head erupted into flames and her fingers ached, assumedly from whatever they were talking about.

"Bracken?" Tani tried but this time Bracken couldn't manage a response before sliding back into darkness.


"We should let her rest. If we wake her up now, it may be too early for her." Leander tweaked his glasses as he spoke. Evan's head snapped in his direction from where he had been staring, wide-eyed and hopeful at the engineer.

"But we can't! What if–" The young king was cut off by Roland who placed a steady hand on his shoulder.

"Leander's right, Evan. Thetis has said she'll be okay with some time. She'll come around." The over-worldly friend reassured calmly as Leander glanced at the woman in question.

He had a feeling something bad would happen. With Bracken, you can almost guarantee the prototype would either explode or cause a little chaos. That was a given.

It could easily have been worse.

A few broken ribs and a minor concussion were just that. Minor.

They'd beaten dragons and walking pigs with swords that had done much more damage than that so it was without a doubt that Bracken would recover soon enough. Even so, they'd all have to pitch in to support her recovery in some way, shape or form.

Perhaps he could ask Queen Nerea about it? Maybe she knew of something that would help?

He shook his head. Since when did he have to look for an excuse to see her? It was almost laughable.

Focusing his gaze back on Bracken, he frowned at the memory of mere hours prior.

The rocket boots had been a success until the hover function. She'd seem to completely lose her balance after barely a moment, her attempts to right herself being what sent her crashing around like a game of pinball in the first place. Batu, of course, had tried to catch her but it would seem as though the boots were a tad too out of control for him as well. His efforts only sent her on a collision course with the large window instead of the wall.

Needless to say, the marks of such a disaster were obvious.

Small gashes marred her pale skin from where the glass had torn through both her flesh and her clothing. The sight had been enough to scare the wits out of them when they caught up to the crash site, never mind the bleeding at the back of her head.

It was a good thing there was a wall built for castle defence where she ended up or she may have ended up demolishing the wall of someone's home.

He shook his head in dismay at the image of one of his dear friends being knocked completely unconscious by an invention of her own creation. A small bubble of anger welled up at the idea that she was probably going to do this again in the name of progress.

He was pulled from his thoughts by Tani as she spoke his thoughts for him.

"She better not try this again. If she does, it won't be the wall that breaks her head set." Her grave tone almost sounded ridiculous as he took in the irony of it.

Bracken had invented the headset so that it would work with the boots as a means of controlling them. However, she couldn't deactivate them when she needed to, using said headset, and it had been crushed when she'd finally smashed into the wall outside, as if it already knew that it was a failure.

The moments after they'd reached her, Evan had dropped to his knees to try and wake her up, Tani had joined him soon after. Leander himself had kneeled down next to her, but it had taken Roland taking charge for much more to really process. The pouring rain and lashing winds had almost muffled his quick commands but he managed to kick everyone back into gear.

Batu had been instructed to carry Bracken to her room as he was the strongest, rivalled only by Bracken herself. Evan had been sent to find Thetis and Da Xing whilst Tani was to make sense of Bracken's room layout in order to find something suitable for the engineer to wear once the young sky pirate helped dry her off. Roland himself had ran off to find Ketch to help board the window back up and Leander had been tasked with tending her wounds the best he could with his experience at the Hubble-Bubblery.

That's how they'd ended up here. All of them, crowded around Bracken's bedside with the two doctors and an air of worry.

"Hopefully, this will put her off rocket boots for a while…" Roland shook his head slightly at the engineer's antics. It wasn't like she hadn't pulled crazy inventions out of nowhere that – admittedly did work in the end – usually ended up going haywire.

"Come now, everyone. We must leave her in peace if she is to recover properly." Leander spoke after a glance at Thetis and Da Xing.

"Um… alright. But… Shouldn't we have someone watching her? In c-case something happens?" Evan suggested, his concern radiating from him in waves.

"She'll probably not wake up tonight, your majesty. We'll come back first thing in the morning to check on her." Thetis seemed to get through to him as he hesitantly nodded.

"Thank you." The two doctor's nodded at his gratefulness before taking their leave. It was a little while later before Evan finally led them away too.

It was best to let her rest for now.


AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Yes. I am still alive. This fic just came to me and I had to write it despite not haven posted / written anything properly in ages.
Welp.
Enjoy!

PS.

I'll move this over to the Ni No Kuni 2 category when it becomes available and will add the right characters when FF decides to add them.