Apologies. Writing has been a struggle recently. I am working on wrapping up To Arms and then trying to get these other new fics much further than they are. I wrote this and kinda dumped it here, so minimal editing, probably typos galore, and at one point, I had a problem with tense and could not, for the life of me, get past it, so sorry if some of this stuff sounds awkward. Thanks as always if you're still with me, waiting patiently. I'll keep going, I promise.
Chapter 6
Seiji has a list, somewhere, of all the things he wants to accomplish in his life before he dies. As a Samurai Trooper, he knows that's both a pipe dream and probably inviting an early death, but sometimes, as silly as it is, that list helps him weather the more difficult periods in his life. He wants to see Krubera Cave. He wants to drive the Audubon in a Porche 956. He wants to participate in a tea ceremony with madam tea master Sosei Shizuye Matsumoto.
Very much not on this list is spending any amount of time with a woman. Any woman. Matsumoto-sama doesn't count. She's a tea master.
Minako Aino fits pretty much every woman stereotype Seiji has ever had the misfortune of encountering. He tries hard not to scowl as she tosses her long blonde hair over her shoulder and then swirls her glass of umeshu idly, her expression somehow bored and looking right through him at the same time. The Samurai Troopers owe him for this.
They owe him a lot.
Shin is here too, but he might as well not be, for all the help he's been. He in fact seems to be making things worse, by stooping to whatever level Aino has been hanging out on, matching her play for play. Seiji isn't even sure he understands what's been going on this entire time. Like there are two different levels of conversation happening at the table, and he's only tuned in one frequency while the other keeps hissing static into his stream of conscience.
Giving this girl their phone numbers had been a bad idea at the outset, but really, he sort of had put his own foot in it by leaping to the rescue in the first place and then sticking around at the hospital after. Next time, Hashiba's on his own. Seiji's never sticking around again, duty done once the trouble is over. Not like Touma even cared. He was too busy mooning after Kino. Who was currently living with him.
Good luck to that very nice girl in Hashiba's disaster of an apartment.
Good luck to Seiji, sitting politely across from these two women, gathering seething stares of envy from nearly every other male patron at the bar. Like he needs that on top of everything else. Beside him, Shin is still his obnoxiously cheerful self as he and Aino continue to engage in their strange, non-verbal game of chicken – a game played entirely through a system of minute eyebrow tics, lip twitches, and weird emphasis on random parts of speech.
Beside Aino, Mizuno sat quietly, her shoulders slumped in a misery Seiji recognized. He'd seen its far more aggressive, aggravated twin on Touma any time they dragged him out into the light of day to interact with other humans in a vain attempt to resuscitate his social life.
On Mizuno though, it just made Seiji feel empathetically sad on her behalf. She was a doctor. Her time was probably much, much more valuable than that of anyone else sitting at this table, but then, here she was regardless, for reasons Seiji had yet to divine.
When is Aino going to get to the point?
"So. Mako-chan tells me you've got armor," the woman in question chirped suddenly, apropos to nothing. Seiji blinked, not prepared for her to just…lob it out there into the middle of the table. Beside her, Mizuno flinches, her shoulders drooping, posture curling in on itself further, like she's wishing maybe the floor would just swallow her already.
Seiji can certainly empathize with the sentiment.
It's not like the Troopers are…super secretive about their armor. They just…don't advertise that they have it. Mostly for reasons that have to do with having lots and lots of power that almost anybody else wouldn't mind having. Or trying to take for themselves. The armors are picky about who wears them in that they want to ensure that the bearers are suitable. But the armors don't really care about good or evil either.
"I'm more interested in that hot minute Kino gestured and lightning bolted through her living room," Shin said cheerfully, dropping the tension from mildly uncomfortable to nearly unbearable. Seiji tried not to shoot him a look, as any deliberate eye contact would be both noticeable and draw further questions.
But really, between Shin and Touma, Seiji was starting to worry that the Troopers were all losing their minds.
Yes, Seiji was pretty sure that Kino had commanded lightning in a closed space, which was more than a little mind blowing, but if the Troopers were secretive about their armor, he could only imagine how secretive a woman might be about her ability to control electricity. Without armor or any other visible artifact or tool.
Aino and Mizuno had both fixed dead-eyed stares on Shin, mute. Seiji considered slinking quietly away from the table and out into the night. Shin had walked himself into this mess, he could maybe walk himself out.
"Touche," Aino finally said, and then finished all the wine in her rocks glass in one shot. Seiji tried not to wince at the sight as she poured herself another glass and then drank that one down too. "All right. Let's talk battle," she said evenly, flashing a razor-sharp smile in Shin's direction.
Great.
This was going to be so fun.
Seiji raised his index and middle fingers, waving down a waitress and asking for a bottle of sake. He turned, shooting Shin the blackest look he could muster, hoping the I hate you was crystal clear. Of course, Shin wasn't actually looking at him, but that was a small detail. He and Aino were locked back in their non-verbal standoff again, and Seiji was starting to get annoyed with whatever conversation they were having that was leaving everyone else out.
His sake arrived, but before he could reach for it, a pair of elegant, feminine hands got there first, carefully pouring him a cup.
"A lady never lets a gentleman pour his own," Aino told him with a wink. Seiji bobbed his head absently, gaping at her.
"Uh. Thanks," he said blankly. She smirked at him, and then turned her attention back to Shin.
"Well. I must say, for a guy who almost never gets out, Touma sure seems to have attracted some interesting company lately," Shin says, leaning forward, challenge in his eyes. Aino raises her eyebrow at him over her glass in response.
"I could say the same about Mako-chan," she counters, and for a minute, Seiji worries that they're going to go back to doing the thing where they both communicate with eyebrow movement and lip twitches while they talk about the weather for yet a third time that night and he gets ready to just get up and walk out.
"Why don't we change focus?" Mizuno says suddenly, quiet but no less authoritative. She, like Seiji must have appreciated that their current run around will not get them anywhere.
Finally, someone else with some common sense.
"We appreciate you helping Mako-chan. Do you know anything about what was in her apartment? The description she gave at the hospital was vague and I'd like to try and understand what's going on," she continued in an even, logical tone that Seiji appreciated right now with all of his being.
The tension at the table dissolved into a new sort of tension, but this was one Seiji had become familiar with over his career as a Trooper.
"Unfortunately, we were hoping that Mako-chan might have a better idea. Neither of us recognized what it was, except that it was definitely not human," he said calmly, sipping at his drink. The mild burn of it moving down his throat warmed his insides with pleasant heat. Mizuno bobbed her head, and Aino…
Had lost all pretense of the bubbly flirt. Her face was dead serious, expression hard, eyes flinty with focus. "Ami-chan and I went to Mako-chan's apartment afterwards to see if we could find anything, but none of the clues were particularly helpful," she said, tone dark.
Mizuno pulled out a small rectangular electronic device in a pale sky blue then for some reason. The planetary symbol for Mercury was embossed in silver on the front of it for some reason, and as he watched, she grasped it, prying it open, and he realized it was some kind of….tiny computer.
Who were these people?
Without comment, her fingers flew rapidly across the incomprehensibly small keyboard, and she paused after a moment, retrieving a pair of glasses that managed to somehow be both nerdy and classy from her shirt pocket and sliding them onto her nose before frowning through them at her tiny screen.
"I picked up traces of unknown fluid at the attack site. The fluid was composed of organic compounds, suggesting natural life but from an unidentified biological taxonomy. Unfortunately, the material was already at a level of decay hovering around the 70th percentile marker, rendering it nearly impossible to gain any significant identifying data from the collected samples. A measure of the damage inflicted suggested large claws on a five finger appendage, such as a paw or hand, and an overly large set of four cuspids – two top and two bottom in an arrangement not dissimilar to a human mouth.
Footprints left in the shattered coffee table indicated feet that were larger than average human size and the strength of the imprints suggested a significant height and a densely packed musculature. Given these few clues, it's safe to say that whatever this is, it's not human, or if it was human, it's not human anymore."
Mizuno paused here, looking up from her screen, chin resting over the surface of her flat interlocked fingers as she studied them all, like she was waiting for them to jump right in with a response.
Seiji wasn't even sure if that had all been in Japanese – he was absolutely not prepared to add anything to that. Shin leaned forward.
"It didn't look human either, if that's what you're driving at. Honestly it had kind of a zombie vibe, but like…maybe crossed with a werewolf?" he murmured, eyebrows raising thoughtfully. Seiji turned to stare at him. Maybe Suiko needed to lay off the horror flicks.
Mizuno only bobbed her head, like that actually made sense. "Mn. That tracks with the size and breadth of gouges I recorded at the site. Were there any other significant you can remember?" she asked, slender fingers tapping away.
"It smelled horrible," Seiji blurted. Aino flicked him a glance as Mizuno nodded, continuing in her typing.
"That fits with the zombie characteristics," Aino agreed before wrinkling her nose. "I hate zombies," she added, "they're like, my least favorite thing."
Like she'd fought them a million times before, among a wider variety of monsters. Seiji found himself wondering if she had a preferred type of monster. He shook his head then, pulling himself back on track.
This week had been wild.
"All right. So we suspect we may have a member of the undead on our hands, but perhaps mutated or altered in some way – stronger, larger, and certainly more of a threat than what we might consider a standard zombie," Mizuno said, looking up again.
"You have zombie…standards?" Shin asked, looking completely baffled. Seiji wasn't embarrassed to admit he absolutely wanted to know the answer to that question too. Mizuno flushed and Aino laughed, leaning back.
"Ah, you know, you fight enough of something enough times and you just kinda…have an idea about what's normal," the blonde replied, waving a hand casually and taking a sip of her drink. "We don't like actually keep track or anything."
Mizuno bobbed her head again. "Certainly I have a database of previous encounters, but I don't necessarily track what might be considered nominal. I prefer to run my analyses on a case by case basis to understand the specific quirks of each new encounter," she agreed, closing the lid of her cute little computer.
"So you…how often do you uh…run into zombies?" Seiji tried not to articulate his incredulity, but really what?
Aino shrugged, topping off her glass. She was looking a bit more relaxed, a bit less combative, and Seiji hated to admit he liked that look on her. It was easier to talk to her when it didn't feel like she might be tracking his every word for ammunition to use against him later or trip him up in his own sentences.
"We run into lots of things. Zombies are just one of them." She waved a hand again, as if the idea that she was fighting inhuman monsters on the regular was a completely normal thing to be discussing.
"In any case, this does share some correlative characteristics with the attack two weeks ago. My concern is that the attack pattern has changed from outright destruction to calculated ambush. I've been keeping tabs on the S— ah, girls, but I'd like to advise that both our groups keep in contact just in case," Mizuno continued, a tone of final dismissal in her voice. Seiji wondered what she'd been about to say before she corrected herself. Still. She wasn't wrong, and he forced himself to focus.
"Yeah, that's sensible. What about a weekly check-in? There a place we can meet up and compare notes?" he asked. Aino furrowed her brow.
"Well, we can hardly meet up at a bar," she said easily. She turned then, exchanging a glance with Mizuno. A quick conversation passed between them silently and then she said "We can do it at Mamo and Usagi's place. I'll let them know."
And then the evening that Seiji had been trying to force to a close ended in a whirlwind. Now that they'd gotten past the initial awkwardness, he found himself wanting to ask other questions that might not be welcome and really had nothing to do with what had happened in Kino's apartment – not directly anyways.
Because honestly, he'd had no idea there were other people like the Troopers – people who had special…talents, and lived two completely different lives. He wanted, honestly, to maybe compare notes.
Mizuno and Aino rose from the table, and he and Shin stood as they left.
"Well. That was fun," Suiko said once they'd left. Seiji glared at him. "Next time, all of the Troopers need to be present," he muttered. Shin beamed at him.
"Yes, definitely!" he chirped. "I would hate to deprive Ryo and Shuu of the experience of watching you try not to have a meltdown while you interact with Aino," he concluded with a grin. Seiji felt his eye twitch.
"I'm leaving," he growled, throwing money on the table and swinging his jacket on as he walked away.
He hunched his shoulders against the sound of Suiko's delighted laugh.