"What the hell is this thing?" Hachiman demands of the woman in a disgruntled hiss, once they're a few blocks away from Kamiki the Elder's house. For good measure, he retrieves the tube to wave at her.
"It's easier if you see for yourself," the woman tells him, disaffected. "When we get to your house, turn the backyard lights on."
Begrudgingly, Hachiman obeys. At home, he stands in his backyard, the night dark and the lights artificially bright, still in his school uniform but without his bag, holding out the mysterious tube. The woman floats before him, arms crossed and regarding Hachiman down her nose.
"You're my high priest, for lack of a better term, so you're already keyed into it," the woman says. "Muster your intent and aim it at that thing. Think: Release."
Who am I? Hachiman wonders bitterly, on the inside. Sakura Kinomoto?
But he still considers the tube, if dubiously. Grimacing, Hachiman holds the tube out as far from himself as he can and thinks: Release.
"Release," sounds from the tube, obligingly, and it starts sparking with green light like electricity. Hachiman yelps and stumbles back, but miraculously, he doesn't drop the tube.
It doesn't stay a tube for very long. There's more green light, more cohesive now, like intricate lines of circuitry in the air, and the tube telescopes impossibly out with mass that Hachiman is absolutely certain it didn't previously possess. In a series of clicks, it forms itself into a green-gray-white spear, taller than Hachiman and with an ephemeral, green-glowing blade. Its shaft is engraved, and the engravings are blue like the woman's eyes are blue.
It's the sort of weapon he could imagine a Gundam swinging around, but much lighter than he might've expected. Dumbfounded, Hachiman stares at the strange spear in horrified amazement.
I'm not Sakura Kinomoto, he concludes, distantly. I'm Nanoha Takamachi.
Instead of the spear, he moves to stare at the woman. "Please tell me it's not alive."
"It's not alive," the woman confirms, which is good to know.
Further, Hachiman asks, "Why does it have your voice?"
"Because I'm the one who did the recordings for it."
M… Miku… Rapidly, Hachiman shakes his head. No! Focus!
"Why do you even have something like this?" he questions. "And what do you expect me to do with it? If it's yours, what's the point of your high priest being—keyed, or whatever, into it?"
"It's ceremonial, for my high priest to use as a ritual prop." The woman contemplates Hachiman. "Still, there's practical applications. As far as you go, while there's nothing wrong with the routine I've had you run up until now, I think you should learn to fight. It's less tedious, for one, and for two, it's more likely to serve you in different situations in your future." She shrugs. "Unless you decide to become a fitness instructor of some sort, I suppose."
"I'm not going to do that," Hachiman informs the woman flatly. He mulls over the rest of what she'd said. With some panic: "Why do I have to learn to fight?"
"You don't have to," the woman clarifies. She levels a single, skeptical eyebrow at Hachiman. "You don't want to?"
If it was his middle school self, Hachiman would already be jumping for joy. But as the case may be, his high school self is only betrayed by a tiny, squirming, traitorous part of himself, that's as giddy as he is wholly terrified.
Hachiman slumps, defeated. "I'm not against it."
And even if the woman explicitly disagreed with the notion, he still very well might have to fight, eventually. He recalls how she'd avoided mentioning other, potentially antagonistic humans earlier, that might have seen Kamiki the Elder's forum post, and his stomach flips unpleasantly.
There's no way Hachiman could survive a violent encounter with a god. Another human, though…
The woman nods her approval. She tells Hachiman, "We'll start now."
Hachiman squints at her. "Wait," he says. She does, and he casts about for the right words. He doesn't think he's quite found them, but after a pause, delicately, he posits, "Every culture I can think of has done human sacrifice at some point. Mesoamerican peoples kinda got a bad rap about it, which you've probably already heard about by now, but the Europeans burned a bunch of people for their god in the early modern period, and over here, we used to do something called hitobashira." Hachiman moves the spear into both hands. Even though the material is oddly light, it's still a burning weight in his grip. "It's the kind of thing you see all over the world. So, you and the other gods, did you ever have the Stoneworkers…?"
Hachiman trails off. He grits his teeth, annoyed with himself.
He finishes, "Did you ever have the Stoneworkers offer up that kind of sacrifice?"
The God of Repulsion doesn't respond right away. With every second that ticks by, Hachiman counts his heartbeats.
Finally, she says, "Faith is the heart of our power, and sacrifice is the heart of faith." It's something she's said to Hachiman before, when he first met her. "The sacrifice of a life is the greatest, most costly sacrifice of them all, so it's natural that it would be the most potent. Humans most of all animals raise up their suffering, their pain, and their misery to us, and in exchange, we provide them with answers, purpose, and protection. Believe in me, and I'll take care of everything. That's the understanding we'd come to. A give-and-take." She scowls. "Our instructions to them had been that a sacrifice should be offered up fully informed and willing, but as they fell apart, they forgot."
Hachiman doesn't need a purpose, but he can't really imagine a person for whom none of those three concepts isn't fundamentally appealing. His palms are clammy.
Strained, he asks, "Did you ever try to remind them?"
The scowl deepens. "Yes."
"I see."
"I think you should learn to fight," the woman reiterates, at length.
Again, "I see." And, "How long until I'm not useless with this thing, then?"
Experimentally, Hachiman tries to wave the spear in indication. In an accidental demonstration of his lack of skill, the momentum takes him by surprise, and with a squawk, he begins to tip perilously over.
The ground rushes up to meet Hachiman, and instinctively, he screws his eyes shut. But then the spear comes to a dead halt, and his arms and knees lock, and he remains, remarkably, standing.
Hesitantly, Hachiman opens his eyes, to the woman suddenly hovering to one side of him, one of her hands up to steady the spear lightly with her fingers. She doesn't appear to have struggled, or to be winded. She doesn't appear even to have especially noticed the force she'd killed, or the force with which she would have had to relocate herself.
She's strong, Hachiman observes, from somewhere very far away. She's fast.
"Just how strong are you?" Hachiman blurts. The woman opens her mouth, but then he vehemently shakes his head and rights himself, to put up a hand with his palm out for stop. "Wait. No, nevermind. That setup was really obvious. I don't want you to crush my skull."
The woman glares at him flatly. "I wasn't going to crush your skull."
Hachiman narrows his eyes at her. "Whose skull, then?"
She just keeps glaring at him. With significantly more caution, Hachiman wriggles the spear at her.
"... So how long?" he prompts.
"You're in luck," the woman concedes, accepting the return to business. She crosses her arms. "Humans have a natural affinity for beating each other with sticks, ever since you were little more than unusually self-important monkeys. The spear is your species's most personally compatible weapon."
For the first time since Hachiman has been around the woman, she smiles, or more bears teeth. Her eyes are terrible. It's the worst expression she's made.
She says, "The rest depends on you."
Hachiman wishes that less things would.
XXX
Through the weekend, the woman keeps drilling Hachiman on how to use her tube-spear, which he takes, unprompted, to carrying on his person. He tries his damnedest not to think about it, but he can't help but get the sense that either the spear is something that it might be insurance to have around, or it'll make him into a mystical beacon for monsters. The woman hasn't attempted to kill him thus far that he's noticed, so when she doesn't object, he gambles on it not being the latter.
Even though he's only been instructed on the foundations of how to handle a spear, together with the calisthenics, Hachiman doesn't believe that the spear—which surely has some arcane name that he resolves not to ask after—doesn't have more horrible functions, like firing laser beams. But, just as much, he doesn't believe that the woman will mention it until he has the basics down, if she mentions it at all. Hachiman hasn't known her to cut corners, as much as he doesn't really know her in the slightest.
Hachiman tries so very hard not to worry about it. After all, there's nothing he can do: he's squishy and small, and increasingly, it's become apparent that he's staring down Cthulhu.
Still, Hachiman can't help but feel restless. Like if he sits still for too long, he'll explode, or maybe have a nervous breakdown.
"That's enough for today," the woman tells Hachiman, arms crossed and floating before him in his backyard, that Saturday evening. The sky is purple and pink and yellow, like a bruise, and it's starting to get warmer out. "Well done."
Hachiman finishes his stretching, which the woman still insists on being necessary, and slumps a bit. The spear, tubed, had been previously discarded onto the porch, next to Hachiman's water bottle and towel.
"Right," Hachiman says, for lack of much else.
The woman nods acknowledgement to him. Then, satisfied with both of their work, she flies off, over houses and power lines, a thing from out of a middle schooler's delusional daydreams.
Dubiously, Hachiman squints up at the evening horizon.
Is she avoiding me? he wonders. She'd taken off on Friday too, after seeing to his routine, and hadn't turned back up until she'd wanted Hachiman to do it again.
Hachiman doesn't know what he thinks of it. Instead of dwelling on the matter, he gets to cleaning up after himself, which he reasons to himself is just as well. If Komachi gets back from her friend's birthday party and finds that he's begun exercising, she might conclude that he rather needs exorcising.
But it's all for naught, he discovers. Over dinner, Komachi contemplates Hachiman from across the table, points accusation at him with her chopsticks, and asks, "You didn't quit the Service Club for one of the sports clubs, did you?"
"Have I been replaced by an alien imposter?" Hachiman fires back.
"That's what I'm worried about." Komachi squints at him, but she does reholster her chopsticks back into the bowl of rice she's holding in her other hand. "I don't disapprove, since it's good to try to lead a healthier lifestyle. Which I noticed you've been trying to do, by the way. But if there's any specific reason for it, I'd want to know whether or not it's something for me to be concerned about." She perks up. "I get a lot of points for that, right?"
"You get an average amount of points," Hachiman sniffs, mostly to stall. Komachi looks at him enterprisingly, like she's ready to negotiate that, so he doesn't get to stall for long. "It wasn't because of anything specifically, okay? I'm just willing to put in a little elbow grease to extend my lifespan. It means I'll have more time to do absolutely nothing, in the grand scheme of things."
Which isn't that unlike how he's been attempting to survive the presence of the God of Repulsion more broadly, actually.
"Hm," says Komachi. She lifts the bowl up to her face to more efficiently scarf down several more mouthfuls of rice, swallows, and then stares daggers at Hachiman over the bowl's rim. "You're not secretly training your ESP or anything, are you? Because that's exactly the type of thing I'd be very concerned about. That anyone would be, actually."
"You got me," Hachiman deadpans. Komachi's eyes go saucer huge, so he rolls his and goes on. "Seriously, though. I'm not in middle school anymore." It's his turn to point at her with his chopsticks. "So don't expect to see me practicing my Kamehameha blast or whatever. I just like the rush of endorphins, alright?"
Komachi lowers her bowl and settles back in her chair, mullish. "Well," she says, reluctantly. "Okay." She brightens up, with only the faintest hint of smug, superior magnanimity in her smile. "In that case, I'm very proud of you, Big Brother."
Hachiman puts his chopsticks down to outright shake his fist at Komachi. "What am I, an elderly dog? Be less surprised!"
Komachi laughs at him.
XXX
Komachi leaves for school earlier than Hachiman that Monday, and forgets to turn the TV off. It's open onto the news, in which an on-site reporter is interviewing the witnesses of a small fire that had broken out in a downtown fast food place. Apparently, some nondescript good Samaritan had vaulted the counter and snuffed it out before it could get really bad, but nobody had managed to get a good look at him before he'd been on his way again.
Hachiman scowls and presses the power button on the remote with some prejudice. The woman is absolutely avoiding him, he'd decided that Sunday, when she had only made an appearance to coach him through exercises and then flown off again. He's in no real mood to hear about the exploits of everyday heroes.
"Go explode, damn normie," he mutters to the black, fathomless TV screen, irritated. Then, Hachiman huffs, because even he knows he's being stupid.
The sky is clouded over on his bike ride to school, casting the world in shades of gray. Rain is a credible threat, which is just as well, and Hachiman is disgruntled enough to halfway delude himself that the crows are watching him. It's just that kind of day.
By the time Hachiman's made it to the shoe lockers, he's managed to mostly put his uncertainty with the woman out of mind. The weight of the tube-spear, which he can practically feel burning a hole through his pocket, is if nothing else an excellent distraction from Hachiman's other woes.
He's not confident what possessed him to bring it along. It doesn't escape Hachiman that he's getting away with something much, much dumber and more surreal than bringing a knife to school.
Worse, as Hachiman is retrieving his indoor shoes from the cubby, all his effort to return his disposition back to his default is flushed down the drain.
"Good morning, Hikigaya!" greets Sagami, venomously cheerful.
Hachiman is so startled that all he can respond with is blank, wordless blinking aimed in her direction. Sagami walks past him with her two friends, never even slowing down, all three of them smiling with an edge of self-satisfaction that sets Hachiman's teeth on edge.
They're gone before he can formulate a retort. Hachiman glowers into his shoe cubby, drops his indoor shoes to the floor, and toes his outdoor shoes off maybe more viciously than they deserve.
Round two to Sagami, he concedes, annoyed. He doesn't want her to associate with him. If there's a next time, he'll have to be more careful about shutting her down.
Behind him again but closer up, Yuigahama approaches, frowning. She stops beside Hachiman as he's putting on his indoor shoes, one hand on the end of the cubby for balance.
"Since when do you talk to Minami?" Yuigahama asks.
"I don't," Hachiman snaps. Picks up his outdoor shoes. Shoves them into the locker. "Now, if you wanted to know since when she's been talking to me, it'd be since she's had something to get out of it."
Yuigahama's eyebrows climb insultingly high up her forehead.
"She's just hoping I'll get into it with Miura again." He starts on his way to class. Yuigahama falls into step with him, but Hachiman doesn't look at her. "So false alarm, okay? It's not about me. The world's not ending."
Not because of me, anyway, Hachiman qualifies, privately, thinking of the God of Repulsion. Then, though, he sticks both of his hands in his pants pockets, and one hand's fingers close around the tube-spear. Hachiman thinks further, Well. Not because of anything I did that Sagami knows about.
Regardless, his reassurance does seem to mollify Yuigahama. "I guess that makes sense," she allows. She laughs a little. "Yeah, there's no way a girl as pretty as Minami would ever actually want to be seen with you."
Hachiman bridles. It's true, of course, and the kind of thing that he would normally let slide, but his spirits had already been at an all-time low the whole morning.
Rather than say anything in answer to Yuigahama, he speeds up, leaving her behind in an otherwise empty hallway. She halts in her tracks entirely, blinking at his back, surprised.
But Yuigahama doesn't take long to recover. She makes a face, balls her hands into fists at her sides, and complains to Hachiman's retreating form, "What's your problem? Jerk!"
I'm the jerk? Hachiman fumes. If it's so terrible to be seen with me, aren't I actually doing you a favor here?
Unbidden, he remembers what the woman had told him, about needing to assert himself more. Hachiman wouldn't know if this counts. It's either that, he supposes, or he's just running away.
One or the other.
XXX
Note: Finally, some sci-fi/fantasy in this urban sci-fi/fantasy...!