Thump. Thump. Thump-thump. Thump.
The pounding of fists on a punching bag and the rattling of a chain echoed through the physical therapy room. Noxis lurched onto his back foot, took three breaths, and laid into the bag again. A jab from his left, then a hook from the right. Three alternating hits in quick succession. A left hook. Then, finally, his carbon-titanium alloy arm left a crater in synthetic leather, and the bag swayed back.
He breathed, panted, and black mist rose from the armor that spread across his chest. It grew down over his stomach, spines spread across his shoulders and down each arm. At his left, it grew down past his elbow, past his wrist, until two-inch claws sprung from each fingertip.
His semblance ended at his right elbow.
Noxis let a breath free. He looked down at his metal fist, opened it, and closed it again. He repeated the motion three times over. As his fingers closed, the clanking of steel rattled into his ear.
The door behind him squeaked open.
"Hey, Noxis," a feminine voice greeted. He turned to the occupational therapist's assistant. Short, a bit stout, upturned nose and a set of small, knobbly antlers sprouting from their forehead. Their short, shaggy hair fit the name pinned to their chest, 'Mauve.' They raised a black crate, and a friendly smile lit up their face. "Looks like those weapon parts you ordered finally came in."
"Oh. Nice," Noxis replied. He took the box and set it on the bench next to the two, unlatched it and slid it open. Encased in black foam was a handle, two halves of a bat's shaft, and a grey box containing all the levers, springs, and pins that made his gun work. In a layer below, countless bits and pieces, two dozen spikes, and a rubber tube plastered with warning labels.
"Damn. That looks intense," Mauve noted. "Mind if I watch you put that together for a bit? I'm curious."
"Shouldn't you do your job?"
Mauve checked their Holoband. "I'm off in thirty."
"And you're not going home?"
"I don't have much going on after this. And I told ya, I'm curious."
Noxis huffed with half a chuckle. "Then sure. I'll be in the commons, if it's quiet."
"I'll be there," Mauve concluded. They began to turn, but stopped halfway and whipped back around. "Oh. And before I forget, I'll send all that paperwork over to you. It sounds like it'll be at least a couple of months to get your last name changed on the official record, but it'll be quicker through your school." Another smile. "And you can start unofficially going by your new name whenever you want, Mister Ezokami."
They pressed a button on their Holoband, and Noxis's responded with a ping. He flicked it open, skimmed the preview, and closed it. "Thanks, Mauve. See you in a bit."
When Noxis entered the common room, the Holoscreen in the corner was already busy showing nobody a story about the FPMC takeover. He stopped to swallow the knot in his throat as Python was walked into court by three guards at each side. She'd apparently been apprehended again by students of Sentinel. He grabbed the remote, and changed to a rerun of an old sitcom he never much liked before the door opened again behind him.
Mauve sat across from him, and he set to work. They watched him precisely lay the hammer, primer, and chamber in place, and don rubber gloves before prying a lightning dust crystal from its rubber binding and fixing it within his weapon's workings. They watched him turn each screw and slot the grip into place, heard him swear like a sailor under his breath when he looked at the instructions and undid five screws he'd just placed out of order.
About halfway done, Noxis set his project down and cracked his knuckles against steel. "Uh, thanks again, Mauve. For all your help, I mean. I really appreciate it."
"Of course. Just doin' my job," they answered. They gave the empty room a quick once-over, and continued quietly. "I'm curious though. How exactly did you end up here? What's your story? Your file says you were injured on a school mission. And, I mean, it is a lot to lose your arm, of course. But I get the sense something else is going on, too. I feel like there's more."
Noxis balled his metal fist. "I don't think that's something you need to know."
"Okay. No worries," Mauve assured. "If you do wanna talk about it, I'll listen."
Days passed, then weeks, then a couple of months. The cherry blossoms dotting the hospital's campus blossomed from bare branches, turned their petals to the sun, and scattered them to the wind. Surrounded by boxes and a suitcase packed until the zipper threatened to burst, Noxis looked into the mirror. His steel right arm pulled his ponytail tight, and the scissors in his left cut it off. He turned his head to see what remained, and frowned.
Again, the door opened behind him. Mauve closed it behind themself.
"Hey Nox– oh gods, what did you do to your hair?"
"I thought it was time for something new."
"Okay. Sure. But you just went straight across!" they held a hand out. "Here. Gimme those."
"What, do you know hair?" Noxis questioned, but he complied.
"I cut my own, and a few of my friends," they snipped the air twice, and pulled up a chair. "I think I can salvage this, so sit."
Noxis sat down, and Mauve got to work. They tapered the back, and tamed the spikes that had grown far too long, giving him an extra couple inches of height and falling down past his eyebrows. They trimmed the sides close to his head, and blended them into the longer hair on top.
They tousled their work, and smiled at Noxis through the mirror. "There. Much better!"
Noxis turned his head, and ran his fingers over the freshly-trimmed hair just above his ear. "I like it. Thanks."
"No problem," Mauve said. They looked at the mess littering the ground, then the suitcase, and back at Noxis. "I hear you're getting out tomorrow. I'm guessing it's back to Vale for you?"
"In a few days," Noxis answered. "I fly back Saturday."
"Three days from now, huh? Got anywhere to stay?"
"I'll figure it out. Got something I need to look into first."
"Oh. Well, good luck I guess. I'll miss ya."
Noxis nodded once, and acknowledged the sentiment with an eloquent grunt. He ran his hand through his hair again, this time right down the middle. "A while back, you asked about what brought me here. Since I'm leaving anyway, I'll go ahead and tell you. But I'll warn you now, it isn't a happy story. You probably won't see me the same."
"That's okay. I told you, I'm here to listen."
But when he told Mauve everything, their expression changed. When it came time for him to leave the hospital, they didn't come to see him off.
Noxis walked alone down the street shrouded in Mistral's shadow. The cracked and cobbled roads hadn't changed, lined with worn-down storefronts and an old drunk every couple of blocks. A police car rounded the nearest corner, and patrolled the opposite side of the road. Noxis raised his hand to scratch his eyebrow, and studied the car's reflection in the window he passed.
It rolled to a stop.
Noxis sped up.
The police car let a minivan cross the intersection, and rolled forward.
Noxis kept an inconspicuous eye out for three more blocks, until the corner store came into view. He paused when the doors slid open before him, and his dark eyes landed on the same counter. The store was so far from everything he'd known for the last two years. But unchanged from the night he took that first step down the path to darkness. Perhaps it wasn't his very first. But the first decisive step past the point of no return. That step off the ledge, into the abyss, into Condor's talons.
The old woman at the counter hardly looked up from her magazine on his entry. He perused the shelves for a few minutes, chose a bag of chips and an energy drink he didn't need, and proceeded to the counter. A dirty rug covered the spot the old man fell, crimson leaking from the wound Noxis's bat left.
"Seven lien, all together," the woman croaked. Noxis pressed his wrist to the reader, and it chimed.
"By the way, an old man worked here a couple of years ago. Heard he got injured in a robbery. You hear anything about him?" Noxis asked as he retrieved his items.
The woman grunted, but a nod suggested her answer. "He survived, but wasn't the same. Couldn't come back to work. Died of a seizure last Summer, from what I heard." She re-addressed Noxis with a skeptical look that swept from his eyes, down to his boots, and back up. "Who's asking?"
"I lived around here a few years ago, and I'm back in town for a bit," Noxis replied. "The robbery's the last big story I remember from before I left. Just got curious, that's all."
"Well, that's what I know of it." She waved toward the door. "Stay safe out there. This place is no better than you left it."
Noxis nodded, and left the store. A few blocks away, he found a place to sit and cast his empty gaze into a puddle of stagnant rainwater. It began to disturb with the first drops of a coming storm.
The rain clouds had gathered, darkened, and squeezed everything inside themselves onto the city below. Drops danced up from puddles, rolled off the building's high roof, into a gutter, and spilled out a few feet from Noxis's boots at the bottom of stone stairs. He checked his Holoband one more time. "Tsutsuji Womens' Shelter." He was in the right place. The door creaked as it allowed him inside.
The receptionist straightened herself when chimes signaled Noxis's arrival. She squinted, clutched her pen tighter when she saw him, but corrected herself before he came any closer. "Good afternoon," she finally spoke. "...Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yeah. I'm looking for a Tsuki Orion?" Noxis inquired. "Or at least a record of her being here?"
"Tsuki Orion... date of birth?" the receptionist returned.
Noxis looked aside. "February 21st." The receptionist looked at him, hands hovering above the keys. "64 post-war, I think."
"I'm not seeing anything."
"Maybe try Tsuki Ezokami?"
She keyed in the updated search. She paused for a second, eyes boring him through horn-rimmed glasses. "And who am I speaking with?"
"Her son," Noxis answered. "She was leaving a bad situation, so I thought she might have come through here on her way out. Now I'm out too, so I'm trying to find her. Trying to reconnect."
Her gaze lingered before it fell, and she nodded. "Well, we do have record of a Ms. Ezokami staying here. It was a few years ago now, so the full records have been deleted. But it looks like she stayed a couple of nights"
"Oh." He zipped a jacket's pocket halfway. Back down, then back up. "Did you meet her, by any chance? She say anything about where she was going?"
"I'm sorry, that was before my time here. Even if I did, we have an obligation to our clients' privacy."
"No, that's fine. Makes sense."
"But," she addressed. She nodded at Noxis's stirring tail. "Is she a faunus?"
"Yeah. A wolf faunus; that's where I got it."
The receptionist scooted back, and pulled a flyer out of a stack in her drawer. "We partner with a program in Menagerie that sets our faunus clients up with job training and resources to get on their feet, and stay there. I'm not sure that's where she ended up going, but it might be worth looking into."
Noxis took the paper, looked it over for a few seconds, and tucked it into a pocket. "That might be helpful. Thanks."
With another nod and wave, he was out the door and back into the rain.
Noxis's last days in Mistral came and went under grey skies. He checked her old workplace, the friend of hers he was able to track down, the tea shop she'd sometimes take him to to get out of the house. Between time passed, the size of the city, and peoples' suspicion, the flyer remained his most promising lead. One day, about five years ago, it seemed Tsuki Ezokami disappeared from Mistral without a trace.
Good for her.
He made his way down the center aisle of the packed Whale-Class airship, bound for Port Cyrreine International. He found his seat next to a woman with impeccable posture, and sat at the window. He leaned against it as the Organd flight attendants ran through their preflight script. Through the reflection of his own dark eyes, three ravens gathered on the runway. One crowed, another landed. Their beady eyes turned toward the ship.
He shuttered the window, and faced forward.
Trivia: Along with a popular saying, which episode of a beloved cartoon series inspired this chapter's name?
