The Shadow Gallery

"A Sweet Blossom"

Timing: End of "As Nightshade"

Characters: Shinji, Asuka, Mari, and Hikari

Hikari busied herself cleaning up the kitchen when the door at the back of the house opened. It was night time and Shinji was resting.

"Shinji?" called a familiar voice. Hikari smiled and walked into the back sitting room where she came face to face with two women. Asuka, wearing an armored outfit that seemed to suit her, stared in disbelief at the appearance of her friend. The other girl was unfamiliar but the combination of leather and round glasses kind of reminded her of a video game character she knew that had weird hair.

"Hikari!" Asuka called out happily as she quickly crossed the room and hugged her friend. Hikari chuckled at the attention and just basked in her friends hold for the moment. It wasn't until they separated again that Asuka realized that something had changed about her friend.

"What happened to you?" Asuka asked.

Hikari smiled softly. "That's a long story," she replied before turning her attention over towards the other girl. "You must be Mari."

"I see I need no introduction," Mari noted. "Shinji told you about me."

Hikari nodded. "He told me everything."

"Did you sleep with him?" Asuka asked lecherously. This caused Hikari to blush profusely and studder out on coherent sounds in her embarrassment as Mari laughed.

"Why would you ask me that?!"

"That's a yes then."

Hikari blushed, her face a rich shade of pink now.

"You didn't waste any time I see," Shinji noted as he walked down the stairs.

"Neither did you it seems," Asuka joked accusingly.

"To be fair… she started it."

"What?!" Asuka looked at Hikari with surprise as the girl couldn't possibly get any more embarrassed at this situation.

Hikari sighed. "It's true."

"See, I told you it was inevitable," Asuka noted to Shinji.

Shinji sighed. "No avoiding it I guess."

"Well," Mari started, clearing her throat to get the attention of the others, "I for one am very interested to know how she became part of the crew… and what she can do."

Hikari, glad for the subject change replied, "I'll tell you the story. Let me get some tea for us… it's going to be a long one. The blood in the fridge is yours I take it?" Mari nodded. "I'll warm you a mug."

Shinji dropped into his easy chair. "This is going to be one helluva tale, ladies," he warned, accepting a glass of punch from Hikari.

"What are you the maid now?" Asuka teased.

"Just being helpful," she happily replied, moving to Mari. The bespeckled girl sat down and accepted a warm mug of O Positive as Hikari finally took a seat next to her best friend.

"Mind if I start?" Shinji asked.

"No, go ahead," Hikari replied.

"So, you all recall a couple of days ago I told you I was attacked by our old friend Rastur?" Getting a nod from both of the girls he continued. "He apparently found or developed a spell that was supposed to weaken my connection to the souls I command. I was in the process of warning Hikari that the company she was working for was working with the Order of Infernus when he showed up. I fended them off but Rastur managed to get his spell off. My Final Guard was able to block it but I inadvertently reflected the shot into Hikari. Rastur escaped and I tried to use raw soul energy to heal the damage to her own soul… but then something happened I wasn't expecting.

"Somehow, without my notice, one of the souls managed to leave me and enter her, fixing the damage by using herself to do it."

"Herself?" Mari asked. Asuka waited with baited breath to learn the truth of this.

"Yes… HER-self. The soul was one you saw me use when we raided that forest mansion."

"Do you mean, rescued her from?" Asuka noted causing Mari to look down sheepishly.

"Asuka, what did we discuss?"

The red-head sighed. "Right… no more teasing about the manor incident. Sorry, Mari."

"It's okay," the girl replied immediately. "I shouldn't have gone in alone."

"In either case," Shinji offered, regaining control over the conversation, "that was the soul. The flower girl that helped me defeat Minotarus. Her name is Alura Une, and I only had one of her in my… well… collection. Apparently though, Alura was in love with me and used the situation to her advantage."

"So… you have another voice in your head?" Asuka asked, turning to Hikari.

"Not exactly," Hikari explained. "She doesn't talk to me directly… not really… I get some flashes of thought from her, but she aids me in using my powers, acting as a subconscious extension of my will. It allows me to control more at once."

"So, what is it you do exactly?" Mari asked.

Hikari sighed, standing and walking towards the window. "I can hear the forest," she began. "The song of nature if you will. My connection to the natural world allows me to command plants, making them grow and move at my desire. I can summon forth vines that can drain the blood of living creatures, produce botanical toxins, plant une seeds that can quickly grow into many varieties of nasty plantlife, transport myself and others though the earth, and in extreme cases I can summon a massive rose to sit in that strengthens my connection to the earth and greatly magnifies my abilities at the cost of mobility."

"Neat," Asuka commented.

"She's nearly unstoppable once she gets going," Shinji observed. "She singlehandedly defeated and Archdemon solo." Mari and Asuka both looked shocked at that. "Also, she's quite inventive, always coming up with new uses for her unusual talents. Her abilities already well surpass that of a normal Alura Une, and they don't seem to be slowing any time soon."

"She's also unassuming compared to the rest of us," Mari noted.

"I've already used that to our advantage," Hikari agreed. "I investigated another accounting firm after losing my last job and found the Order of Infernus was using an artifact to attempt to destroy Tokyo-2. We put a stop to it, and I even got to fight a Candidate."

"Did you win?" Asuka asked.

"Win, yes, but he survived, I think. Considering I was cut off from my main source of power, I did pretty well against him."

"So you succeeded in foiling their plot," Mari stated with a smile. "Way to go. Glad to you have you on our team."

Hikari chuckled at that. Then a look came over her face. "Oh damn… that's right."

The other girls looked confused.

"Let me guess," Shinji offered. "You were thinking about how you got him back for what happened to your apartment… when you remembered… well… what happened to your apartment."

"Kodama and Nozomi will be back in just a couple of days. They still don't know what happened."

Shinji turned towards the other girls. "The Candidate she fought was Dario Bossi. He's an expert with fire… and when he came after us, he managed to burn down the entire apartment building."

"Shit," Asuka noted. Mari had a similar reaction.

"We'll have to figure something out," Shinji noted. "Keeping them here is not a good idea."

"You still have any of that retirement money left?" Hikari asked.

"A good amount, just nothing that's going to last forever. This house was quite the investment."

"Well, if you trust me, give me your account access keys and I'll see if I can't maybe expand on that."

Shinji nodded, going into the study area.

Asuka put an arm around Hikari. "I'm just glad you're safe."

"Yeah," Hikari replied. "Finally…"

After a light dessert and tea, Hikari tried to get some sleep but found herself unable to do so. She got up and headed back down into the living room where the Laptop with a Satellite uplink waited. Wasting no time, she logged into all of Shinji's accounts and tallied what he had available.

"I think he underestimated a bit," Hikari noted. While the funds available did have their limit, he still had enough for at least two more housing projects if he was frugal about it. Hikari looked at the calendar and knew immediately what she needed to do, but the markets were currently closed. Instead, she chose to prepare, writing an auto-exe file to assist her when the time came.

She spent nearly 45 minutes on her project before she finally felt like she was being watched. She looked up and realized she probably should have noticed sooner, because the individual who had been watching her was in the open and not making an effort to hide at all.

"I didn't see you there," Hikari noted, returning her attention the computer. "Been too focused I guess."

"Was just enjoying watching you work," Mari replied. Her outfit was far more casual this time, but at the same time really showed off her assets. They looked to Hikari like spandex workout attire.

"Getting some gains?" Hikari asked, putting a little bit of an American accent on the last word. Mari chuckled at that.

"As a Vampire, I'm always awake at night," she explained. "And believe it or not, Vampires can benefit from regular exercise just as much as the living can."

"From what I've heard, you don't sleep much at all," Hikari replied.

"True, not since…" Mari stopped short and looked down and away a moment.

Hikari stopped typing. "Shinji wasn't going to tell me about that," she admitted. "I figured it out based on our conversation. I'm sorry."

"No… it's…. it's fine." Mari breathed out a hard sigh and turned towards the other window. "The hard part is convincing my subconscious that the reason we're not trying again has nothing to do with him rejecting me. He isn't… I get that."

"But your subconscious instinct can't reconcile why he doesn't want children."

"It's been hard," Mari admitted, letting a single bloody tear fall from one of her eyes. Before she could react, Hikari was hugging her from behind. Mari froze a bit, but then so did Hikari having felt just how cold the girl was.

"I'm sorry," Hikari whispered.

"If I had to guess, you're almost as awkward as I am right now."

Hikari pulled away allowing Mari to recover a moment. "I get that I'm part of a Harem now," she explained, "I'm just trying to reconcile that fact."

"Sharing not easy?"

"Not just that," Hikari clarified. "Part of me is not having a good time of that, but this isn't one of those situations where anything can be considered normal for baseline me. I haven't been baseline me for almost a week now. It's more along the lines that I'm now feeling the pull towards my old friend…" Hikari blushed. "And you."

"And you've always been straight?" Mari asked. "I thought every girl had that 'phase' in their lives where they were figuring themselves out."

"I've always been determined to be a 'good girl'," Hikari replied. "When those feelings came, I ignored them, fought them off, stayed the stern and forthright Class Representative… I kept my focus on who I wanted… even though he was more interested in my best friend."

"Ouch," Mari whispered. "What made you want to stay so 'Straight and Narrow'?"

"Kodama… My older sister tended towards other girls throughout high school and she had nothing but issues. We girls are admittedly more complex than boys are, and Kodama had her heart ripped out by careless girls all the time. Then when it came time to seek employment, the recruiters asked awkward questions about her personal life, and the answers she gave made it hard to secure work. No one wants a Lesbian it seems thanks to the population drop after the Angel War. Homosexuals are seen as a blight once again. Seeing her awake at night crying into her pillow over the state of her love and professional life made me believe that it was just a bad path to follow, so I vowed I wouldn't do it."

"So, what changed?"

Hikari just gestured around her. Mari could tell she wasn't being fully open just yet, but decided it was best to let it go for now. The girl would open up eventually, when she felt more comfortable with the situation, but Mari could understand seeing an older sister having so many issues as a Lesbian why Hikari wasn't keen on the idea now.

"Well, you shouldn't worry so much about what other people think. I would be the last person to judge you, considering everything that happened to me. Asuka supports you, after all she's your best friend."

Hikari sighed, then she jumped slightly when Mari put a hand on her shoulder.

"No one is going to force you into anything you're not ready for or willing to do," Mari assured her. "Despite how badly those girls treated your sister, I can assure you having been a Lesbian most of my life that we aren't all like that."

Hikari felt truth in her words. "Thank you, Mari."

"Try not to stay up too late," she suggested. "I may be able to go for days, if necessary, without sleeping, but you're still technically still a living being. Even plants need to rest."

"I will."

Mari smiled, patted her on the shoulder, and went back upstairs. Hikari spent the next 20 minutes finishing up her work before going to bed for a few hours.

Shinji awoke to Asuka using him as a bed and Mari curled into his side. He sighed in contentment before Asuka opened her eyes and smiled at him.

"Guten Morgan,"Asuka greeted.

"Morning to you too," he replied before leaning up and kissing her.

"Do I get one too," Mari asked sleepily, only to get a full-on kiss from Asuka.

"Seriously, are you two starting up again," Shinji asked amusedly.

"Is that a problem, Master?" Mari asked as she pulled a now giggling Asuka off of him.

Shinji sat up and stretched. "No, I suppose not."

"You should join us," Asuka teased.

"Not this time girls," he replied, leaning over a kissing Mari, before kissing Asuka second time. "I need to check on our new arrival."

"She's a bit troubled," Mari noted.

"Talked to her last night, did you?"

"Her heart is guarded," Mari noted. "At least to us girls. It may take her a bit to open up."

"Don't worry, Mari my sweet," Asuka offered. "I'll get her to open up."

Mari made a happy sound as the girls continued to kiss. Shinji chuckled lightly and left the bed.

He took a few minutes to wash up and get dressed, finding both the girls fully entangled and into each other in the middle of his bed. He mused to himself that they were trying to kill each other when they first met, but now they were just as close to each other as they were to him. He counted that a good thing for his own sanity.

Arriving downstairs, Hikari was sitting in front of the laptop, occasionally hitting keys and waiting.

"You look like you're intently working there."

"I don't suppose, you can get me some of Mari's blood," Hikari asked.

"Warm?"

"Please."

Shinji went into the kitchen and found the blood supply. Filling a glass with it, he stepped back out into the living room. "So how is it going?" he asked, placing the glass next to her. He suddenly took note of the flower that had attached itself to Hikari's bare right shoulder. The outfit she wore was a one-piece dress that only held up by the band on her left shoulder. Her entire right was exposed and her flower, presumably the same one he saw that night when they attacked the Order of Infernus was there. This time he took note of the thin roots seemingly rooted into the flesh of her shoulder, but in a way that seemed like a natural transition. Two of the vines from the flower crawled over to the glass and entered it, immersing themselves in the crimson liquid. He noted the level of the fluid increased as the roots displaced some of the liquid but was now slowly going down.

"Not sure I'll ever get used to that," Shinji noted.

"Even though one day you might have to drink it yourself?"

Shinji sighed, watching the vines slightly bulge where the blood was being transferred to the flower, then into the roots sunk into Hikari's shoulder. "I hate thinking about that."

"Sorry," Hikari offered, seeming to be completely unphased by the blood pulsing its way into her body via her shoulder.

"It's fine. It's not like I can let myself forget that my future isn't exactly a bed of roses."

Hikari smirked. "Was that supposed to be a joke at my expense?"

"What? Oh! N-no! I didn't…" he stopped when he heard her giggling.

"Sorry, it was actually a pretty good pun to be fair, even if it was unintentional."

"How long are you going to be at that?"

"Until the market closes," Hikari noted.

"I was hoping we could talk."

"Then talk," Hikari replied. "I can multi-task."

"Mari tells me you're feeling off."

"That's an understatement," she admitted. "I did tell you about Kodama, right?"

"I seem to remember that conversation from school yes."

Hikari stopped typing a moment. "I'm not opposed to any of this, so you know. Mari was pretty persuasive." Hikari looked around the room. "And she's fucking my best friend right now, isn't she?"

Shinji couldn't help but laugh. "They tried to drag me into it, too. I declined. Even for me there is a such thing as too much of a good thing."

"Maybe that's why this whole thing is actually working," she observed.

"Maybe," Shinji mused. "I am still worried about you. This transition hasn't been easy considering your own experiences."

"I'll manage," Hikari assured him. "I saw myself as a monster, now not so much, but I can't call myself human either."

"You are a sweet little blossom to me." This earned a warm smile a slight blush from Hikari. "So… any good news?" Shinji asked.

"As a matter of fact," Hikari hit another key, still smiling at the flirtatious comment, "You're now about two orders of magnitude richer than you were yesterday."

"Wait, what?! How?"

"Strategic market trading," Hikari noted. "I noticed what day it was, and realized details on staple food futures were being released today, so I preempted the market on a hunch which caused a bunch of other investors to jump on the bandwagon. That drove the price of those futures up significantly, then when they peaked, I sold all but about 10 percent of what I'd purchased. That alone made you about 1 billion yen. Now I've been investing that into more stable investments, giving you paid dividends per day of…" she hit one last key, "one point three million yen. So, you're effectively making around ten-thousand US Dollars a day, and that is only going to increase over time."

"That that rate, I can complete another safe house once per month without issue," Shinji noted.

"And my sisters can be provided for."

"No wonder your skills were in such high demand."

"Well to be fair, we got lucky. A lot had to go right to pull that off, but I was confident I would make us at least some money off that tactic. Since it was successful even beyond my expectations, I took advantage of the situation, and now, I can keep growing our investments over time.

"And I do mean our; I added my own savings into the pot I had to work with since we're all living together anyway."

"That's fair. Hikari… thank you. This is a huge load off my mind."

Hikari jumped on him and kissed him deeply, feeling his arms wrap around her.

"For you, My King, it was a pleasure…"