Fifth Ammo: Rest and Relaxation are Important, You Know?

My eyes slowly open, and I shut them again to close out the light. Ugh, how long have I been out?

"About time you got up," an unfamiliar voice chastises me. "You know, your injuries weren't as bad as some of the others, so why did you decide to sleep in so long?"

I sit up and take in the surroundings. It's a pretty well furnished room, I'll say that. Considering there's no one else in the room, it's safe to say that the voice belongs to this girl. She looks young. Seven years old? 'At most.' She had longish blonde hair, and her eyes were different colors, one red and one blue. Weird.

"Oh, are you waiting for introductions before saying anything?" the girl asks, tilting her head to the side slightly. "Or are you still kind of asleep?"

"I'm still kind of out of it," I reply. "My head feels like I just got ran over by a steam roller."

"That's because you did," the girl says. "Actually, that might have been preferable to what actually happened. Your name?"

"Saito Hiraga. Your's?"

"Louise. Just Louise, I don't have a last name," she tells me.

"… Really."

"Yes, really!" she says with a pout. "My mama gave me that name, and it's a very nice name!"

"R-right, sorry," I apologize. "So who are you exactly?"

"Louise," she says again. "Did you get brain damage from your encounter? If so I might need to do a few more treatments."

"N-no, that won't be necessary. I meant what are you doing here?" I ask.

"You mean, why are you in my house?" she asks. "I brought you and your friends here after your… less then favorable encounter. In other words, I'm your nurse, so you've got to be nice to me!"

"…"

"Um… that was a joke," she says sheepishly. "You don't have to be nice to me, but I'd like it."

"I see. So what exactly happened?" I ask. "I remember nearly dying, and now I'm here."

"Yep," Little Louise says with a nod. "That's pretty much exactly what happened. You and your friends nearly died after trying to fight a god. Me, a friend and my little sister were passing by and brought you to our house to help you out a bit. I'm good at healing magic, you know."

Odds she's lying about something? 'High. Wasn't time frozen when we fought the Snake?' That's how I remember it. Passing by, was it? How convenient. Stay on guard.

"How are Shana and Louise?" I ask my nurse.

"Shana's fine," Little Louise assures me. "She was the first to wake up, though she hasn't come out of her room since then. Pink Haired Louise and Other Louise… I'm not as sure about. They got messed up pretty bad and lost a lot of blood which apparently people need to survive. It's taking a pretty surprising amount of effort just to keep them alive and stable. Don't worry though, I can handle it and they'll be fine, I'm sure."

"And everyone else? Eve, Fuka and so on?"

"Much better," Little Louises says with a smile. "Their injuries weren't as bad by comparison. Well, that's not saying much, and they were still bad. Bad, but still pretty easy to heal."

"That's good to hear. Thank you for helping us."

"You're very welcome," Little Louise says with a smile. "Think you can get up? I'm sure your friends would be happy to know that you're okay."

"I think I can get up just fine, thank you," I say as I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up.

"They're just outside in the lobby," Little Louise tells me. "Just walk out of this room, turn right and keep walking and you'll find it. Do be careful though. Your injuries are healed, but you might still be a bit sore."

"I'll keep that in mind, thank you," I say as I make my way to the door and start walking towards the lobby. As I exit out into the lobby, I see Eve sitting at a table talking to Fuka.

"Look who finally got up," Fuka says when she notices me.

"Nice to see you Saito," Eve says with a nod in my direction. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," I admit. "How about you two?"

Fuka shrugs. "Back's a bit sore, but not the worst I've ever been."

"My skin still feels a bit hot," Eve says. "Other then that I feel rather good. The staff here are good at their jobs."

"That's good to hear."

"So, are we going to have a chat about what happened?" Fuka asks. "Some pretty serious bombshells were dropped."

"What's there to say?" I ask. "We're kind of in over our head, aren't we? Being a bunch of misfits trying to take on a God."

"Nah, we're good," Fuka says as she props her legs up on the table, puts her hands behind her head and leans her chair back on it's hind legs. "Me, Desco, and everyone else beat God once, and we were a group of only six. I think we can handle this."

"I'm happy that you're so optimistic, considering we all nearly died," Eve responds. "It's something our group could use."

"Really, I don't know what everyone's worried about," Fuka says. "He's not even God, capital 'g,' he's just some super powered spirt of creation that's gotten beat down before. Twice. We've got this, no problem."

"And does anyone else agree with your viewpoint here?" I ask.

"Nagi was oddly optimistic and her butler agreed, even if her didn't seem all that happy about the situation," Fuka counts off. "I think Aria and Taiga are with me, though Ryuji and Kinji aren't very happy with the situation. Dunno about Shana or Louise, I haven't seen them."

"Do you know how they're doing Saito?" Eve asks.

"Shana's apparently fine, though she hasn't come out of her room," I explain.

"Yeah, I've seen Aria try to go talk to her, but the door never so much as budges," Fuka replies. "I'm not surprised, considering there seems to be a lot of bad blood between her and that Yuji guy."

"As for either Louise, I don't actually know," I admit. "Louise, the one that's played our nurse, said that they're not doing too good. They're alive, but barely."

"Are they're going to make it?" Eve asks.

"Yeah… Yeah, they'll be fine. Louise is strong, she's been through a lot of difficult things. I'm sure she'll wake up soon and yell at us for daring to imagine she wouldn't pop up just perfect."

"Managed to convince yourself yet?" Fuka asks.

"I'm working on it," I admit. "I'm worried. I'm really worried."

"It'll be fine," Eve says. "You have nothing to be worried about. I'm sure the staff is doing everything in their power to help her."

"Thanks Eve."

"There. A little optimism never hurt anyone, right?" Fuka says with a smile. "See you two in a bit, I'm gonna go take a dip in the hot springs for a while."

"They have a hot spring?" I ask. "What kind of establishment is this?"

"A pretty good one if you ask me," Fuka says.

*Aria POV*

"So, what's up?" I asked Taiga as we rested in the room I got from the blonde little girl. "Wanted to ask how to feel about facing a world ending threat?"

"No, I just wanted to talk to someone who wasn't such a downer," Taiga says. "Ryuji thinks we're in a really awful situation. I keep trying to tell him it's not that bad, but he's really fixated on the fact that we all nearly died."

"Shouldn't you? You're just a high school student, the only experience you have with anything like this is light novels and manga."

"I'm a very well rounded student," Taiga replies. "I mean, it doesn't really matter if we're facing that could kill us, we've got an angel on our side don't we? She can just go all 'pipiru piru piru pipiru pi' and bring us back, right?"

I look at her in confusion.

"You've never heard of that?" Taiga asks. "I guess she was pretty unique."

"You must have met some pretty weird people," I note.

Taiga shrugs.

"I knew some weird people myself," I remark wistfully. "I certainly wouldn't mind if they decided to come visit and help out. Odds of that happening?"

"Zero."

"Figures. Would it kill that angel to bring in some more people? We're fighting a god! We could use numbers."

"Who knows how this inter dimensional travel works," Taiga says. "For all I know bringing in just one more person will destroy everything. It's not a concept any of us can really hope to understand."

"It's still stupid. I'm going to see if Shana's feeling any better. Want to join me?"

"I'm good. I'll see how everyone else is doing. See you around Aria."

"Goodbye Taiga."

*Louise POV*

"… What am I supposed to do with you two?" I ask the near-corpses of Ms. Valliere and her other self. Actually, I suppose she's Mrs. Hiraga now. Whatever! The two Pink haired girls that got messed up a while ago! Wait, Aria also has pink hair. ARGH! Why'd I have to be named Louise, it makes it really hard to think about things dealing with them!

"Seriously you two, it's annoying to think about you when I'm Louise, and you two are Louise and my little sister is Louise and- AAAAAAAAAH. Too many. Why didn't I stick with Arturia? It's a good suedo… psydu… psyda- Ow! Bit my tongue! Fake name, it was a good fake name."

I sigh and look down at the two struggling to stay alive.

"So which of you is going to die first?" I ask. "I can't have you both survive, so would it kill one of you to just give up? … Wait."

I close my eyes and shake my head.

"No, I suppose that wouldn't work. I can't have both of you live, but I don't want to just kill you. That's evil, wrong and immoral and my parents would kill me for it. So how do I get rid of one without killing you or just letting you die?"

Think Louise, think. You're kind of smart, you can think of something! Yet all I can think of is reasons I shouldn't have gotten involved with all this nonsense. Who came up with this stupid idea anyway? Bringing him back and… wait, I came up with it. I take it back, I am an idiot.

"Oh, who cares. Through my many moments of idiocy, I have crafted a clever solution, so please don't die, either of you. That would really kind of ruin everything."

Okay, I haven't done this before, so this'll be good practice. Shouldn't be that hard, and it'll solve everyone's problems. Shall we begin the operation?

*Saito POV*

"OI! Saito!" Little Louise calls from the hallway. "You mind coming here for a second? It's pretty important, so I suppose I shouldn't call this a request."

"Be back in a minute Eve," I say as I stand up. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

"Do you think it's about Louise?" Eve asks. "She sounds like she's in a good mood. That's good, right?"

"We'll see," I say as I head for Little Louise. "So what's up?"

"Alright, alright, I'm gonna tell you some stuff that's gonna seem really heavy, you need to not react because the kid's there, alright?"

"The kid?"

"Me! Wait," Louise puts a hand to her chin and ponders. "Nevermind. Forget about the second half, but I really would like it if you didn't react until I'm done with it otherwise you wouldn't here everything, okay?" Little Louise asks.

"Um… sure?" This is sounding worse and worse.

"Okay, in the technical sense of the word, one of them died- THE TECHNICAL SENSE! THE TECHNICAL SENSE! They're both alive! Well, in the spiritual sense which is all that matters if you think about it in that both of their souls are alive, and thinking about it now they're both alive in the physical sense since their bodies are kind of alive too but-"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," I says as I hold up a hand. "Pl-please start from the beginning, you're really worrying me. You said one of them… died? Like… dead, dead?"

Little Louise pauses and takes a deep breath, and then another.

"Okay, Let me start from the top and go through slowly. I'm sorry, I was panicking because I didn't know how to explain it in a way that wouldn't make you or anyone else panic. See, both Louise and her other self were really messed up. Badly. I recall one of them was cut in half?"

I cringe at the memory.

"Right, sorry," Little Louise apologizes. "Well, it's hard to keep them alive when they're missing limbs, half of a body and lost a lot of blood and so on. I was trying to see what I could do to keep them both alive, before reasoning it was impossible. I'm good at healing magic, but I'm not that talented, I can't raise the dead and so on. I realized pretty quickly that I could only save one, which meant leaving the other to die. I had an idle thought that I barely had enough pieces between the two to put together a whole body, which gave me an idea."

"You haven't been reading Frankenstein, have you?" I ask. Little Louise seems surprised.

"How'd you know? It's a pretty good book, isn't it?" She says with a smile.

"You're not doing a lot to make me feel any better at all when you start bringing in things like that."

"… Oh! Ohhh! I'm sorry! I just realized what you were thinking," Little Louise seems almost embarrassed at the exchange. "No, no, no. What I did was something I saw in a story once, a soul fusion technique."

"Soul… Fusion?" I'm confused. Ditto.

"See, what I did was basically, take Louise's soul and I took the other Louise's soul and merged the two together," Little Louise explains. "This helped make it sooooo much easier to heal one. I used the energy of one body to heal up the other body and the rest was easy. So one body technically died, but they're both alive, just sharing a body."

"Are you telling me that there's two Louise's in one body now?"

"Yes and no," Little Louise says. "Like I said, they merged, so if anything it's like a third Louise was spawned. There's only one Louise in the body, but she's both the Louise's combined. Fusion and all that, you know?"

"…"

"Perhaps it'd be easier if you talked to her? She's up, but a bit weak still so she won't be leaving the bed for another day or two. She's in this room right here," Little Louise says as she points towards a door.

"Thanks again Nurse," I reply, earning a big grin for the kid. I walk past her and open the door. The first thing I see is Louise sitting upright in her bed looking… pretty good actually.

"Wait," Louise says when I walk in. "Um… Dang it. I was trying to come up with a sarcastic comment to preempt whatever one you probably would have come up with. I think I'm still a bit worn out though."

"Are you okay Louise?" I ask, walking up to the bedside.

"Aside from being briefly dead?" She asks. "Oh sorry, it was only in the technical sense, I've been told. Apparently I was never really dead."

"So how do you feel?"

Louise chuckles. "What are you sounding so worried about? How absolutely unlike you, Saito. I'm messing with you. I feel fine. Really tired, but fine. My namesake told me that's a side effect of trying to get reacquainted with my body now."

"Yeah, she mentioned something like that. How's that working out for you? Being two people in one body seems like it would be weird." Are you trying to imply something? 'Whatever gave you that idea?'

"It's really not as weird as you would think," Louise says. "It's not like there's two voices sounding off in my head or anything."

I envy her. Hey! How many times have I saved your ass over the years? '… None that I can recall.' Well what about… Or… Point conceded.

"So what is it like then?"

"Hmmm…" Louise tilts her head and thinks. "I still feel like me, and I still remember everything. That's kind of the problem, now I've got two sets of memories. There's the memory of the me that you know and married and there's the memories of the Louise that summoned Shana. I try not to look back on them though. That is the weird part, I'll admit. I look back and keep thinking 'Wow, I wouldn't have done that, I should have done this.' Hindsight acting up, I suppose."

"I can relate," I admit. "There are a few things I'd redo if given the choice."

"Or not, considering you were given the choice to redo some choices and did it mostly the same," Louise points out. "Twice."

"I was being cautious," I said. "I didn't want to make things so much worse then what it was and ruin everything for everyone."

"I know," Louise says. "I'm guilty of the same charge, for the same reason. Doesn't really matter anymore, I suppose. Now we've got a bigger problem, don't we?"

I nod. "Yeah, a much bigger problem."

"How's Shana taking it?" Louise asks. "She said she killed Yuji once, and then he shows up again. She can't be taking it well."

"She's not, from what I hear. I haven't visited her yet, but I heard that she hasn't left her room since waking up. Aria tried to talk to her, and I was thinking of trying after I made sure you were okay."

Louise laughs a little again. "How sweet of you. Make sure to take care of her too, okay?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, nothing," Louise says, the grin on her face contradicting her words. "Just go comfort her. Really, I think you might be the only one who could make it work. So go for it, okay?"

"Right, right. Oh, apparently this place has a hot spring, so you could go rest in there for a bit if you're feeling up for it."

"It does?" Louise seems surprised. "Well, I suppose I could go for a nice hot bath after sleeping for as long as I have. Thanks Saito. Now go make her feel better!"

"I got it, I got it. Rest up and get better soon."

"I'll be fine!" Louise insists.

I walk out of the room and close the door behind me to give Louise some privacy. Little Louise isn't anywhere to be seen. Must be checking up with some of the other people in our group. Well. One item off the checklist, now to check up on Shana.