Work Text:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 — Ocean of Reeds (Ocean of Reeds x Rule of One)
Chapter 2 — Rule of One (Rule of One x Blue Skies)
Chapter 3 — EXTRA - STAGE (This House is Cardboard x Urphobia)
Chapter 4 — The Unconfronting: Water Dyed in Crimson ~ Is This It? (Troubled Eastern Story x Classics Appreciation Club)
Chapter 5 — Blue Skies (Blue Skies x Troubled Eastern Story)
Chapter 6 — You Are Always Welcome Here (Urphobia x Ocean of Reeds)
Chapter 7 — Found A Warm Spot (Classics Appreciation Club x This House is Cardboard)
Ocean of Reeds
In the center of a large grid consisting of places and things that, though more familiar than the natural radio waves and movements of things and such that go on in and beyond the convulsions of Nature, Hans could not call himself an expert of, there was a collection of things that came together naturally enough that by and large it could be as given as the hidden movement of radiation in space. So set in front of the lazy backstreets there could be two-storied buildings lying beneath the canopy of three and above story, wooden façade and dim inside making it appear as either a hidden gem nobody else had ever found or a mineshaft. If you were to go inside (past the unique architecture of the building because just finishing construction before '81 when the new code passed kept a forgotten literal slice of time as the surroundings were of a more modern make) then there'd be the expected collection of things: wooden everything, a gruff proprietor who silently took in issues if you'd ask, a shelf creating a rhizome of functionality with every bit of limited free space taken for practicality.
And not to minimize anything by moving ahead, because in things such as these, things such as nostalgia required a bunch of tinier parts to help with the creation of the feeling, where you'd hope that it couldn't be exploited to reliably mimic a nostalgic feeling and felt your entire hope in the world shatter when it could; because otherwise there could have been a million things that could have dragged on attention forever. Instead there's something above the coffee place and the shelves and the smoke from the machines and the roaches—of which there's maybe one or two, maybe once in a decade or more, but every allegation unproven anyways. The people inside, otherwise, too conditioned to see the staircase as anything other than an employee-only area; and outside, walking beneath the somewhat murky panes, these specific windows would otherwise be forgotten in the hundreds of others pockmarking the boundaries of Tokyo. Inside here lives basically the entire reason for the world existing to exist.
Now, well, it's awkward to say, but that hasn't exactly happened yet right at this moment, and neither does the other person sitting there exist in the exact, expected moment that he may otherwise be expected to. The larger, older one, sitting on the mattress that was sinking underneath its own weight, was wearing his shirt that ironically had some otome series printed on it, wearing a sweatshirt after deciding that it was too embarrassing being seen in it. He was the owner of the room and the will-be savior of the world. He had an interest in many things, and a pride in his curly hair, a surprising competitive streak for minor things, and a likeness that may be described as gentle if it weren't for the permanent glare and permanent scar.
Sitting on the couch that was also sinking from its own weight was the interloper, belonging to another time than may otherwise be expected. His exact build sank into the baggy clothes and true emotions beneath a similarly ill-fitting demeanor. Though obviously younger, it couldn't be pinned down exactly where he was—providing something else for Akira to focus on rather than the marvelous and continuous stream of half-baked thoughts passing through the younger boy's mouth.
"Lookie here, look: you've got this girl. And you like her," Shane said.
"Never said that," Akira grumbled.
Shane ignored that because, once seeing a picture of the two of them together, he was convinced there was some kind of fate or genetic thingamajig saying the two absolutely needed to be together. "Look, yer tellin' me you got this girl and she's like that, aight? Aight. I heard 'nough: let's go over the facts: she's a rich gal, she's an overly kind gal, she's feeling coocoo over her 'sponsabilities, she's basically Erika, and you're like me!"
"Hopefully not," Akira mumbled.
"...a bit rougher, and a bit more dumb, but you're exactly like me otherwise! So let's get to the brass tacks: you need to be a little bit less like you." Shane continued on despite there being clear annoyance emitting from Akira's posture. "See, the thing is, she likes those aesthetics, yer bad boy, not nice guy aesthetic, but they're just, like, aesthetics, y'see? They're surface-level kinds of things instead of that soul in you, 'cause you've got a soul, probably, and I have a soul, probably. Something close enough to that if you want to get picky 'bout it."
To emphasize their newfound soul-hood, Shane started pounding against his chest with a ferocity that made Akira want to either help or use that as an excuse to kick the strange kid out of his room. Better yet, for the kid to get a heart attack; and he chastised himself for that, apologizing in his head because hoping for the kid to keel over was genuinely fucked up—in his own words. This little diversion stalled Akira's wrath for a little longer, letting Shane finish with his little performance.
"And see here! Think about it long term: I wasn't thinking about it long term and even now I'm not doin' that 'cause that really sucks to do; kind of leave it to her, y'know, division of labor, where I provide the, uh, the stuff, you know, things. I provide things. See, the thing about rich girls—yeah, exactly! They provide more things than you do. You can't think of this in terms of things because you're always going to be worse and you'll be found wanting. See, that's arguments too! Don't argue! Because if you argue, oh no, you know what's going to happen, eh? You know! You're gonna always lose it. You'll say you clean the dishes—I make twice as you do every year. Then you'll say that you try your best and your best just isn't good enough, Abira, it just isn't!"
Leaning a bit let Akira see into the remaining cobwebs that he should really get to doing. To travel back in time brought up a bunch of painful memories, but it also brought up a bunch of good: there was the time that he had seen his parents arguing, the smoldering started because his father had to cancel a movie date (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a 1995 film released from Europe, having a rerun at their local movie theater in relation to having a dedicated month touring through the films of the continent to where the mark eventually, naturally, landed on Belgium; and due to the movie theater's owner not liking many Belgian films had then shifted focus instead towards his favorite country for its food and movies and, subtextually, women—France—and though 'mind-numbing' so described by certain critics, probably had moments of genuine beauty because otherwise there would be a mind-numbed crowd instead of thralls clapping in the seats of its theatrical release in America) and had culminated because of his father forgetting to turn off the stove. Screaming back and forth. Akira could remember his dad claiming that he was the breadwinner and his mom shooting back that the breadwinner spends way more than her. Parent arguments are not fun, Akira thought to himself, and if he had said it out loud, surely he could have gotten a deep and great insight from the boy who started leaning forwards.
"You're a quiet guy. You have nooooothing to add?" Shane asked.
"Nope," Akira said.
"Well, then, let's get on with the second part: so considering that you like that weird anime stuff and are a gamer, I'm assuming that you're perverted. Let's do some purification rituals so we can clean that gutter crud out of your mind."
Akira fell back onto his bed, trying his best to drag down his cheeks and reveal that there was an off button to his hearing somewhere there. Instead there was only the external acoustic meatus flowing through like an unmanned checkpoint and maxilla doing more work than Atlas or the turtle or any other of those guys who'd been saddled with carrying the entire world. If this person had a Social Link then this Akira supposed that he would have been the Devil because there was nothing else in the world that peddled nearly as much nonsense as this little imp right here; and if it were the other Akira, who could have been named Ren, sitting there indulging, then he would have instead supposed this kid to be a Fool himself. In reality it was the Moon sitting there, unable to make a Social Link because that would require him taking Akira the least bit seriously.
"Why did I even let you in here?" Akira asked. "Where did you come from?"
"Which question's more important?" Shane asked.
Steepled hands came over his mouth and nose, dragging down the youthful, plush, unflawless skin. Through a gas mask's muffled nozzle there came his tired words. "Does it matter?"
Shane, then, started to rock back and forth in his seat in a way to look like he was thinking. "Oh, I suppose that they're both pretty easy to answer—so I can say that I came from two different lives and you let me in because I'm a wandering guru with the advice. Now! Like I said: defiling, of which you're really used to because you've got those plastic girls on your shelf. M'not like those health people that are going to hand you a gem in orange juice and say there you go, that's it, and I don't say that there's a specific deprogramming frequency. This is entirely based on your effort. So! Close your eyes and think it with me: your girlfriend fully clothed. Up up up! She may not be your girlfriend but your thoughts are the same as the world. They make the world, y'know, so if you're positive then everything's nice and, y'know, all the other stuff."
"That's stupid," Akira said. Because if that were true then he would not be in Tokyo, he would not feel like a dumbass for a good quarter of his life, and almost definitely there wouldn't have been this stupid kid sitting in his room.
"Sh, sh, truth's hard to eat, so let's focus on making some tangible difference. We're going to keep that image in your mind. And—aha! I felt those dirty intentions! Sit still so I can smack you. Corrective therapy. Corrective therapy!"
Rule of One
I forgot exactly when this had happened, but I can swear that I did. It was definitely after that shitshow at Madarame's palace and it was before that poem got really involved. As far as the time, it was sometime after school. This is exactly why I write everything down.
One of those days that I was walking around I saw somebody playing with the kid that I had played with before. He had a nasty face that only a mother could love and otherwise the most generic kind of fashion that could make a Japanese teen. The obvious thing to say was that this guy was in a fellowship with me. If you don't get it then that's on you. Every gamer on every side of the globe doesn't know how to dress and usually has an uninspired at best haircut. We universally don't care about things like that. I guess that makes me a fake gamer because I realized that I cared when there were so many people in Tokyo stealing my 'do. But gamers generally do not care and that extends to having difficulty recognizing one another in the wild. Also they were in an arcade. You know. Yeah.
Anyways, I had mostly approached out of boredom. Nothing else to do, so why the hell not? I've done everything and the big bad hero gets his little time to make him not feel like a fuck up, so I approached with something nasty, I don't know. The little shit was pointing and laughing like there was a joke coming by.
"Look at your face, dude! Get smoked by a kid half your age again?"
It should be noted that, before anyone thought this was good banter, the kid literally wore a hat with one of his favorite phrases. 'Get Smoked' proudly declared his victory before you even played. Honestly, there's also only so many ways that a young person can call another person old. At some point you've run out of jokes and when I brush them off they treat me like I'm the bad guy for responding with the same tired jokes too.
"More like had a shit day. Why else would I be at an arcade of all places?" I asked. I slugged off my backpack next to theirs. "Got room for a rotation?"
I watched the other guy shrug. The boy nodded. I watched and I realized that these two were way better than me. I waited until the boy won as usual and I took the guy's place. Playing for a while was fun. I lost. I went and got a drink. I came back and the guy was just finishing. Close. Not close enough.
I looked around. I felt annoyed. What was I even doing in an arcade? Spending the money I had just earned? Playing crappy games that I was going to lose anyways? Waiting for my turn. Watching lights flicker. Thousands of yen in profit in these things. An arcade palace. Would you break these or coin machines? Felt weird. Wanted air but didn't want to lose my position. Drank the rest of my drink. I wanted another drink.
"Oi," the guy said. "It's your turn."
The guy had won. I was going to get my ass kicked.
Loading up the character had the guy choose another one that wasn't his main. I looked over. The guy seemed casual because he had never changed expressions. Hard to even tell that he was enjoying his game. I fiddled with the sticks. I wondered if there was soda spilled on them because it felt sticky. I could have just been bad. I felt that this was going to be hopeless.
Instead halfway through the match he had started to talk. It was going much better for me than I thought it was.
"Day went bad at school or outside? Or your family?" The guy shrugged when I looked towards him. "Learned myself that talking makes me feel better. See, I've got this little sister. She's the literal devil. I'm talking like an actual imp crawled up from hell, and I've got parents that never see eye to eye with me on that. I mean that they have never seen anything other than the blushing little angel. Whenever I get pissed about that, I go find someone to bitch. Really, that's what I'm doing right now, bitching."
Thought to myself around then that maybe we were too similar for comfort. I did some kind of DP and he blocked.
"Don't think I got anyone better to do that with?" I grumbled.
He continued playing the game. When he won round 1 he looked at me. "You wouldn't have come here if you did, right?"
Got me in game and real life. The worst kind of guy, and I felt that from his face he was a supreme shit talker too. I always hated those types who knew how to use their words.
When I didn't say anything he sighed and said, "look, if you want an actual reason, then let's just say that I hate bothersome things. I hate people who are bothered by things just as much as people who make themselves a bother. There's not a single person my age who goes out to arcades so I have to resign myself to literal kids. Unload whatever woes and other things you have if it means you'll at least give me a good gaming session right now."
I gave him a side eye because it sounded like he was trying to give me a speech straight from a manga. But you know what? I didn't have much room to talk. It's the blind leading the blind here, and the blind-ish one shouldn't be laughing at the blind one. At the end of the day I was tempted by the offer just so that I could actually say what was on my mind.
"It's everything. Everything sucks right now," I said.
"Oh." He beat me. "You're right about everything sucking. You're losing bad. You really suck at this game, dude."
"Fuck you."
And for some reason, with this guy that I barely knew, my world slowed to a stop, and I unlocked the Hanged Man's social link.
EXTRA - STAGE
Facilitating something greater, or something that I could tolerate, I could not understand the fathoms working beyond the collections of pixels and the bytes creating my prison. It seemed, and I would be the first even then to admit that it took an undue amount of paranoia to create such a cage, that the threads were making an active effort in sewing together new interactions so I would never get bored, that I would become docile like a dove in a cage, yet infinite, unchainable, as my downy feathers would coat the whole of reality from the facsimile of grimy underpinnings and the virtual heavens created in service towards the idea that on the opposite pole of hell must then be heaven; but this place that seemed to be heaven, I knew, from its very existence, that such things must then be thought of coins, if I were to use that familiar adage. Yes, I thought, and think to this day, that then if there must be heaven then equally there must be hell, equidistant to materialism, equilibrium kept by having the same exact circumference and diameter and everything that could measure such places—bytes, what have you. Though I suppose even then I have subscribed to the same nonsense that heaven and hell must then be opposite poles. Ah, the have-nots! I should then be described as have-nots, for uniquely tracing a new constellation between these points had and has me coming in circles! Grand circles, circles nonetheless, to where I'm little certain of the worth of even hearing my breath leave my mouth, shaped as such, where it could be either a scream or the exchanged life in a kiss, and my thoughts towards love (the ordering of life) rather than newness itself.
Pulling on the threads came with a satisfying feeling. I had been in my room for quite some time, skipping school again for I only had reason to serve the only sense of will in this frozen world: that being, whoever had added these disruptions to my perfect (nonsense) world, then evil themselves, yet good themselves, as every Creator should be, because Creation then is everything and everywhere, or that's my view of things. That being who had added these disruptions then should be the only one that was putting on a performance, where it could be said that we were having a mutual performance with one another. Such macabre feelings suited the macabre atmosphere. Truth be told, I was bored, and almost willing to investigate for the sake of it. If a stage was made then who was I to avoid the stage? Who was anyone? Because if I was comparing us to a performance, then, by God, or whoever other proper idea you may swear to—there was no difference from our own to society, and thus leaving this gilded cage then was stepping off one stage to the next. So fear not the stage! Whether your dreamlike figures or the nightmare tragedies, or your workplace or the street, there is no end to the performance!
Another thing: ruining such a stage before I had even the chance to explore it left a bad taste in my mouth. Cracking a vase that one had never even seen was a folly applicable to Orpheus: heedless, alas! and vanquished of resolve, and what came next, shards rolling on the floor, mendable, but if I were then the only true 'being' in the world, then that it broke once would make it breakable forever. I remembered once I had thrown the books in my room out the window in a fit of rage; I remembered walking down the steps, my broken piano, and as I left out the front door I remembered that there was no comfort to be found in having a second breath from a new air conditioner if you had never touched the fresh air.
The new additions were easy to track down. Since traveling in such a world is boring, I would rather if we were to cut to the chase and talk about these new additions.
One had introduced herself as Taylor. Literate, sullen, about a personality near enough to myself that I felt a pitiable rage when seeing her bespeckled frown try to curry a sort of sympathy from myself, or otherwise make herself meeker than she otherwise could seem. As though I were being goaded or invited into breaking this person, and I wondered whether one or the other was true; because both could not be true, I could not be meant to pull at this person's control issues or at her self-hatred, her distrust of authority or hatred of the world, or the veritable deck of issues that had been given if this were not a form of underlying test that I was meant to take. The simulation of a body otherwise caught no attention. When I abruptly left in the middle of the conversation she seemed more relieved than confused.
Then the other: Bachelor Dankovsky, as he would like to be called, running on a fool's errand to find the cure against death. This character was much more interesting than I had initially been meant to realize. I however found his method of talking as an absolute bore and left midconversation. Unlike the other he started yelling at my back.
I had to recognize that both had been made to be interesting in their own ways. From the meek (yet beyond that, something stranger and stronger than I could acknowledge made in myself) to the snake (snakeskin coat, those black eyes claiming salvation beyond) was a dichotomy so obvious it could have been laughable if landing on a better mood: the control freak and the control freak, one due to abuse, the other—obsession. Everyday, unlike the rest of the world, the two went on new routines. The Bachelor convinced that a greater power had beaten death in this town. Taylor had to recover from a traumatic event.
Just like every other script, I was the editor, she who had interest in God's work. So if they wanted the truth that badly, with my eyes closed yet having been awake all night: Taylor then, come to the Literature Club as a new transfer, and Bachelor, you are hereby invited to become a guest lecturer at our horrific amalgamation of a high school, college, western, eastern, this hallowed ground that had truly beaten death.
When the script had been moved and I had decided to come to school for the first time in a month, I had spoken:
"As you would say—alae iacta est. Your move, Bachelor, Taylor," I said.
The Unconfronting: The Water Dyed In Crimson ~ Is This It?
---
Vogel's Eye "Pitch Black Eye"
---
They were flying down some kind of gigantic tower. When Tsubakura thought about it, it was kind of nostalgic in the way that nostalgia sometimes annoyed you. That wasn't the definition of nostalgia, of course. They liked lying even in their own head.
"Oh, no, no, no! We're going down!?"
The baggage was the last straw for the flying crew. It was too much having girls hanging off both arms and a boy hanging off like a backpack. Really, Tsubakura should have thrown him off ages ago considering all that the boy was doing was getting snot all over their hat. It just showed that Tsubakura was getting too soft and they should have been throwing people off the edges of bridges just to toughen up.
Said coward was trembling as they tried readjusting around Tsubakura's body so that they could find a better place to hide behind said gigantic hat, or perhaps just so it didn't always feel like they were a wrong jerk from falling down into the endless pit below. They weren't exactly a coward however. That term was simply wrong. Neither were they just an idiot. They weren't anything that every one of their detractors (meaning everyone they had ever met) thought, and they weren't everything that could prove those criticisms wrong. At the end of the day the problem of this person was that they were relatively unexceptional, and put in an exceptional situation. Some would gently imply about this boy's potential; Tsubakura would gleefully point out the amount of natural-born talents who were born talented. Embittered Fairytale, Emil Sinclair, who had a bloodstained Karabiner 98k being carried by one of the annoyed students.
Because this may be seen as a bit separated (both in time and otherwise) from the main narrative, in defense it's like at a high school reunion, where it is good manners to reintroduce people who have been away for a while. So from the beginning: Loafing Monochrome Teacher Without a Plan, Tsubakura Enraku. Mother of Written Knowledge, Kozeki Ui. Club of Steel, Dreams of Steel, Heart of Steel, Kiryuu Kikyou, who was the unlucky one who had offered to carry the rifle.
As they worked past the veil of black each of the people present had different reactions.
"Huh. That's a rather powerful illusion spell. Wonder what's the occasion to bring out the real vintage," Tsubakura said.
"You know, if it were a few months back, I think I would have vomited. I would have thrown up all over the floor and I would have been mortified." Dull eyes traveled up. Ui looked as though she had been reading a manual. "Now I just don't care. Tsubakura-sensei has truly ruined me."
"How bold of you to say as if there are no worse circumstances yet to come. Well, that's the short of it, and we know how at least part of our innocence has been robbed. Would you like to take responsibility, Sensei?" Kikyou asked.
"Would you like to feel if that illusion also comes with a tactile dimension? Better yet, I have plenty of positions for lab rats that are going unattended," Tsubakura shot back.
Kikyou did a tactical roll of her eyes, ending it off with a bit of a bite to her tone. "You would go through the process of training an entire new set of students to be as capable as we are?"
"But I hadn't trained you nothing."
"Exactly."
Tsubakura kept up their stare before buckling. They were clearly contrite as they grumbled, "never taught ya how to have a backbone either, s'what. Practically forming a union right in front of me."
"A Schale union? What would we even demand? Fair pay?" Ui asked.
"The Senseis joining in for paperwork."
"Hazard pay?"
"Standardized hazard pay, and being able to talk about the money that we make."
"Then obviously there should be a standardized test that new people would have to take."
"For their safety."
"Right, of course, but also so that the Senseis don't feel pressured in dealing with all these new students."
"And that they don't take our benefits?"
"Oh Kikyou-chan, we were trying to dance around saying that outright. Now everyone thinks less of us."
Some point halfway through they both started smiling, making Tsubakura start to grimace and Sinclair panic more.
"Y'know that s'not only Wu Sangai burning in hell for eternity for betraying the nation. Hell's got plenty more room for souls of new lowlives," Tsubakura said.
"Why don't you save a spot for me, Sensei? May as well suffer together," Kikyou said.
Sinclair wanted to ask why exactly they were choosing this moment to banter yet became fully paralyzed when they fully entered the illusion's embrace. Long piles, from beginning below to far beyond the horizon, bodies thrown into communal piles. They were high for a corpse pile but a hiker would scoff otherwise. There seemed to be no distinction between the bodies besides what state of dismay they were in. Some were more horrified than others, all had a vicious red coloring more inline with actively pouring blood than those left out to dry as these appeared to be.
Beneath a violet sky, there was a specific mountain higher than all the rest. Glowing so fiercely that none of them felt safe directly looking at it—except Tsubakura, of course, because other than not believing they could even go blind, they felt sure they could also invent a way out of blindness. They saw the shadows of some kind of cross and another person standing down there on the mountaintop.
Landing thankfully made the sun diminish until it simply felt like a spotlight was shining down on the actors. Kikyou and Ui read the room, taking out their rifles and aiming down at the person standing across from them. Like every other mountain, there was a joint membrane of the bodies losing individuality, to where there very nearly was a flat surface for them to fight on. Whenever they got too comfortable however…Ui accidentally stepped on a head, popping it off, and watched as it bounced down the hill, continued bouncing, every so often the blank eyes staring back up at her in astonishment that she would do such a thing, and rolled to a stop at the hill. Still staring up at her, incriminating. Worse in detail was the girl hanging from a cross, a student, sobbing and begging that they save her.
The person standing across had patches of blood just as common as military decorations, her strange outfit of multiple different styles mashed together standing clear out from the blood-soaked viscera. Her wild eyes beheld the four touching down without any sign of surprise. Her only weapon was a gigantic, thick nail hanging loosely from the tips of her fingers. She was a bad person. Anybody could see that. Where youkai would normally enjoy fulfilling their purpose, Kromer was an overachiever in that regard. She loved every moment of the kill, from the planning to beyond when a person's soul leaves their body. Some days she imagined herself as a demon who could sully that too and ruin their eternal afterlife. The One Who Grips, Franziska Kromer, one of the only students in Kivotos who did not carry a gun. Instead she rolled around a gigantic spike in the palm of her hand, that seemed fit for nailing a cathedral to the ground.
"Sinclair, oh, Sinclair. Did you not know this is beyond the rules? You were not supposed to bring such friends, Sinclair," Kromer said.
Rolling their eyes, Tsubakura pointed. From the tip of their finger came a black and white beam that shot Kromer first like a frisbee, then a shot put, then a golf ball, then Ui couldn't think of a sport similar to how far Kromer was flying, off into the violet horizon until her white outfit literally couldn't be seen anymore.
"Well, this whole diversion was annoying." Tsubakura firmly readjusted their hat, looking at the sacrifice crying tears of relief on the cross, and how the illusion wasn't going away. "Guess we should go get the vacuum cleaner and janitor. Hope they got something to do with this."
"You're talking about Shion-sensei and Yabusame-sensei," Ui said.
"That's what I said, yes," Tsubakura said.
Sighing, Ui slapped her forehead. "Why didn't we just pawn off the work onto them in the first place if you were going to give up at the finish line? May as well do nothing and give 'em everything really."
"Ui!" Kikyou yelled in shock.
"Ugh, it's not like I wanted to come down to something like this. I'm sure that Natsu-chan and Haruna-chan would have said something like, 'interesting palette' when getting all of this," Ui gestured down to her shoes that were starting to sport an interesting shade of red, "all over them. I just wanted to read today but, no, there has to be something like this happening in Kivotos."
Nobody noticed how Sinclair had fallen to his knees. Or when he started crying tears of relief, sorrow, at least an emotion that he could not fully comprehend, like he could comprehend a single thing when the first thing that Schale had done was fly in through the sky. Sinclair boxed his head in and felt a single wrong word from screaming, one more insane thing happening from completely losing it.
"So the issue is that I'm giving up at the finishing line? Fine, fine. I'll just set my settings to, hm, cat, which one would you put it on? You read the manual that I wrote," Tsubakura said. There was a bullet that skidded off their hat. "Violence befits lesser beasts."
Kikyou's smoking barrel was holstered just after. "Think of it as corrective action instead. You're familiar with that, yes? I would set it on Reality Dematerializer, though I think that Horror Disassembly may work too."
"That setting's more for things of the dark, eldritch variety, but the Reality Dematerializer ain't a bad pick. Not bad at all. Do that and you'll avoid remedial classes your entire career."
At that, Tsubakura's machines, black as ink, circled around them. A laser started cleaving down the world. Everywhere that it touched melted until there was only a normal, empty chamber left behind. Kromer, at the far end of one of the mountains, had climbed to the top with her hands raised high, as though fighting against an angry god had come—it was here where Sinclair was completely focused when the beam enveloped Kromer, leaving a white outline that may have had a devilish smile despite the circumstances, where that silhouette lasted longer than the illusion of bodies around them. She dissolved, piece by piece, surrounded by her sickening world, until the beam turned and there wasn't even a body left. It was here that Sinclair started screaming, at least until Kikyou started jamming the butt of her rifle onto his forehead so he could shut up.
Blue Skies
There were enough odd things that happened during the time that I sailed with the Blue Rogues for me to have a whole children's book series of ideas (and I'll only mention it here; that was one of the ideas that I had for steady employment). Anything trying to keep a narrative isn't enough for me to catalogue all the, frankly, weird shit that had happened while sailing alongside them. Whether that is Holfort's skies specifically, the skies in general, or that the Blue Rogues were at a constant risk of absurdity, or that I myself was cursed for absurdity, there were enough wacky events that I had left out because it would actually weaken the way the rest of everything was described. It's the same as having a military movie and there's a part where some battalion is completely surrounded with no guns and still somehow comes out ahead. People would think the rest of the movie is bullshit even if that actually historically happened.
In the same way, there was a time after a raid where we were refilling at a nearby port so we could hightail it far from Holfort's borders. Angie and Livia were having some girl talk, Fina and Aika were off doing the immensely boring task of refilling our food stores, Vyse and Marco were getting the younger boy a sword, and the rest of the crew was preoccupied, leaving me at a rare moment where I could have some peace. I elected after my tasks were done to stare off the ship's ledge like some kind of princess in a high tower. It was yet another dreadfully boring town but when you had been in the skies for so many days, any single street plot of land became the stuff of dreams.
So it happened that I could see in the distance our captain talking with someone. At the time I didn't think much about it. I still wasn't thinking much about it when we were in the cabin while Vyse was teaching me. Leering at the people who were watching had Vyse laugh at my reaction.
Vyse clapped a hand on the leader's back.
"Leon, this is Kuroji. They're hitching a ride to the neighboring town that's half a day away, so I thought that this was the best time for you to learn how to pilot." Vyse nudged his head over to the increasingly nervous person, who I couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl. Thinking that made me then reconsider Kuroji and come to an inconclusive conclusion. "This here is Iyozane. And over there is a name that I'd mess up if I tried pronouncing it. Heh, sorry for taking your guys' introductions. Just thought that you'd be as quiet with the rest of the crew as you were with me."
Iyozane certainly didn't speak. Kuroji did the talking, the captain of another crew as it were.
"No issue, no issue at all. Iyozane and Saragimaru both are tired from traveling so much in so short a time, you have to understand. Well, it's not as if I do. Iyozane is some kind of sailor too, and last I checked Saragimaru is some kind of version of vagrancy, used to long days on the road. Quite. Shouldn't it be my feet that are tired?" Kuroji asked.
"Ah, so there's where your venom went, you wicked snake. Hiding it for when we already had received a ride," Saragimaru hissed.
"Where is this self-loathing coming from? If I'm the metaphorical snake then you yourself must have been born and raised in a pit," Kuroji said.
Iyozane looked as though they were in physical pain. "Can we not embarrass ourselves too much? I would like to retain some form of dignity when I'm let loose."
"Can't be any worse than with your new emperor," Kuroji said.
And the tone whiplash nearly had me get our ship into a fender bender with a rock, as Iyozane sounded exultant as they he/she (they? It?) said, "oh, now that one's true! Nobody's as good at humiliating everyone around them as Fumikado!"
"Oi. Say something like that and I'll intentionally try. Losing without making an effort is akin to the death of the spirit," Kuroji groused.
Looking at Vyse had him good-naturedly shrug.
Looking back at those people brought the same conflicting feelings.
Other than carrying the conversation away with their own efforts—let me try to explain by describing the leader. They (I am going to temporarily use this) were wearing a baggy, purple coat, obviously their most proud feature because it had the most detail in it; so much so that describing it as I am is going to inevitably have so many features described that there can be some assumptions made, which I'll dispel right now: I don't think the coat looked good, I did not want the coat, it was not actually that crazy of a coat at the end of the day, and Vyse's looked better. This coat was purple, ending at triangular flares at the end that would flap around when they moved. A hood freely flapped around too but it was so small I assumed that it was for decoration. Some strange design starting at circles nearer to the collar, slicing downwards, until ending up at the aforementioned flaps with an arrowpoint. Each of these were rainbow-colored, thin enough that at certain angles they could have been mistaken as a trick of the light.
Otherwise they had a black and white shirt that reminded me of some fashion back home but damned if I could remember the exact description of that. Shoved down onto their messy, black (and this is an assumption, damn it, because everything about them felt ambiguous) hair was a mostly black mob cap with a white triangle curved over its girth—styled after yin-yang, with a final white dot on the black side to further the impression. Inside said white dot was something that said 'THINK' though Luxion argued that it actually was 'THOUGHT'. Their shorts were white and looked somewhat like a diaper. Their shoes were purple and were something, I don't know. They looked weird.
Now that you have the wardrobe that would only be worn by an anime character, let's describe their describe-less features: I can't! Damn it, I can't! Everything was sending me mixed messages! When they spoke, their voice was close enough to a girl's that I wanted to fully go ahead and say it, but also had a bit of the scratchiness that would come with a guy's trying to do a high voice that I didn't want to call it, but it also turned into a guy's when they were obviously trying to be smug, I think, or it could have been a girl's. Their face was a mishmash of boyish and girlish features, more close to where I felt this person was much older than they initially seemed while retaining their youth. Or that it was a composite made by a computer of common youthful features, boy or girl.
Then it could have been in the musculature. But even here! Thin shoulders, thin legs. Adam's Apple, rugged hands. It was like they intentionally were trying to throw me off. Androgyny is genuinely terrifying. Almost I wanted to call them a trap but, not only was that term becoming faux pas with certain groups back when I died, it's also wrong because a trap means that they're trying to look like a girl while being a boy and I could not tell if they were a girl trying to be a boy or a boy trying to be a girl or that I was having a stroke specifically targeting my people-recognizing part.
And especially when Angie and Livia were present, I didn't want to ask, both because of how long we had been talking by that point and, you know.
"Really?" Livia asked. She was clenching her hands together and leaning ahead.
"Oh yes, youkai are everywhere," Kuroji said, waving their hand casually. "Youkai far as the eye can see."
"Like," Aika's voice descended into a hiss, "ghosts? Monsters? Ones that eat you?"
Angie sighed in irritation. "I am not sure why this is a particular sticking point for you, Aika. The monsters of the sky with the same storytelling could capture a certain terrifying aspect. Certainly I have some of my own: would you like to hear when an entire village was eaten by a sky whale."
That made Aika tilt her head. "But I kill those all of the time. They're not scary."
"We may be able to do the same against ghosts too," Fina gently suggested.
"I'm okay with never getting the opportunity to try it!" Aika squeaked.
Also, you know, I kind of had a, you know, particular thought.
I was there. Aika was next to me, leaning on the window. Fina was standing right behind me to watch over the skies. Livia was to my left. Angie was hovering over her friend and me, putting her in an awkward middle ground where her shoulders could accidentally brush with the both of us. If Kuroji was a girl (is Kuroji a girl's name?) then they would also be a girl standing in reaching distance. There was all that room in the cabin and they were choosing to be next to me.
Wasn't this the most female attention, even if not explicitly romantic, that I had received in my life? And it was because I had become a pirate? Food for thought. All I could say that working a job and being a generally nice guy certainly didn't get me these kinds of things. I clamped down on that train of thought because it was too depressing for words.
"Nothing about that compares to our adventures, though," Vyse started rubbing his jaw, smirking, "I would like to try my hand against these youkai. Sounds like they've got plenty of adventure."
"And gold!" Aika bounced back, sounding excited.
"While being immune to conventional attacks? Not to talk badly about your magic, Vyse, but I do not think that you have enough power to fight back a skilled opponent solely with your spells," Angie pointed out.
Vyse made sure to respect her space, her noble side resenting anyone trying to be overly familiar, while emphasizing the nonchalance. The pirate side came out in his face, offending her noble sensibilities. "Angie, haven't you already learned? Hard things are fulfilling because they are hard. And if you are scared of every single new moment you can experience because it is hard, then you will never run ahead at full speed, loving every minute of it. Even if you can fail and even if the failure is permanent, I would rather not have that cowardice on my conscience when I am certain there's troves of experiences to be had."
"My, my. I knew that youth made one full of follies but I would imagine that even age would leave you foolish," Iyozane said.
Saragimaru, for some reason, further giving me the impression that these people were not right, started chuckling. "Of course it's the ones with the pitch black souls that shudder when hearing such positivity."
"Isn't it out of character for you to be so optimistic?" Iyozane asked.
"Well, yeah, it's stupid, but I only felt about a prick in my heart hearing such nonsense. The two of you were nearly slain on the spot," Saragimaru said.
"Though they did not run a hundred paces, they still ran away," Kuroji said, scratching some long-forgotten part of my brain. "Vyse, was it? Have I the deal for you. If you want to indulge in the terror of youkai, I happen to know an area that would be ripe for you. Simply ask and I would take you there—for a minor fee."
Fina leaned into Vyse, though barely made an attempt to hide her voice. "Do not take the offer."
"I wasn't going to anyways," Vyse said. "You seem like a crafty character," Vyse said even brighter than before.
"Phew. Not that naïve," Saragimaru said.
"You were not going to take responsibility for waiting to see if our captain took the deal?" Angie asked with a sharp eye on the underlings.
"And risk myself for what? If you fall for something like that, you're your own sucker. If I help you're just gonna drag me down with you. Pirates honor!" Iyozane said.
"What does that even mean? Pirates honor…" Aika slowly looked ahead of us, leaning on the window and pointing. "Enemies ho! Pirates off portside!"
Everyone gathered at the window so they could see it closer. Somehow our guests—not that I had taken them to be pacifists since the Saragimaru one was carrying a weapon—seemed more enthusiastic than anyone else.
"Run, fools. You're seconds away from a lifetime debt trap," Saragimaru said, clearly unworried. They seemed resigned more than anything.
Kuroji whipped around. They had a certain swagger with how they crossed their arms, leaning on thin air. "Captain Vyse, mind if we tag along? I assure you that we can more than carry our weight. Let's say that I would even be willing to be underpaid, as though only one person were raiding."
Surprised, Vyse looked over each of us. Livia was uncomprehending. Angie was subtly shaking her head. Aika gave a discreet thumbs up. Fina gave a very minute shake of her head.
Finally Vyse came onto me. Thing is that if I knew this person was equally as wicked as me, I might have had a different answer than nodding.
You Are Always Welcome Here
Day 0, The Orphan, Boardwalk, 1:31 PM
in which an uninvited character to this particular play intrudes through the back door.
Gray skies, gray seas, undifferentiated, so too the buildings, all fallen into a specific calm of the witching hour. Since tragedy has not yet struck—that being a tragedy of the town, not the individual ones that may well as be microbes dying in the gut—then it becomes less obvious how a relatively active part of the city may be left empty, and, honesty taking precedence over keeping the veil which lies between fiction and nonfiction, it is simply because the background actors have not yet come into their roles. Plays too are life, as too the mirror is in the world as all else.
Upon the planks which warble as the Mayflower's treacherous boards, in those simple sailors unknowing of their consequences, taking care the same as would be chronicled a thousand times over, fiction and nonfiction—there is beset a temporal nature in the waves that warble through the thin lines separating land and not. Across this distance further than may be made, this person's home, a child so indistinct as to not be able to be picked apart in a crowded playground, amidst plastic vines and shredded chips. They were walking as a drill sergeant between the small crowd of actors, some of the only ones to be present on stage by the time that this had been starting.
"...so the fisherman goes there and says that, and then we go. Understand? Good, good. I played it all the time when I was a kid, so, y'know, you know!" the kid, Dane, or, the Shapeshifter, says.
Gathered, mourners for their lost time yet too in-character to do much else, are the consequences of holding good working habits. We're all in this together, people. I would not otherwise be narrating as so. I normally talk like this, right? Yeah. I normally talk like this and the stupid script has me going some godawful mix of ye olde and modern-olde, yeah. Belike the coal miners of old, stringing up their bosses.
Dane leans down and gestures with their palms. No response is forthcoming on the other side. So in-character that they already are starting to give wary side-eyes to those who see different futures of utopia; though if this humble actor may be given a moment to have their own stage and express their own inner world, then understanding may be seen in each of their dark, too-souled eyes that none want to be there.
The Shapeshifter cannot take this however. Dane leans down, patting his knees. "Come on! Let's get this going! You say, I say! So you say:"
Very reluctantly there comes from each of them at different intervals.
"Fisherman, what color is flying today?"
"Fisherman, fisherman, what color is flying today?"
"What color fish are flying today?"
The Shapeshifter nods happily. "Alright! And then I say, blue! And then…"
The gathered group comes along: the Bachelor is tagged first, then the Haruspex, the Orphan next, then the Devil, Mark Immortell, and both Changelings.
The Shapeshifter scratches his head in confusion as the Changelings stand next to each other.
"Which one of you did I tag?" Dane asks.
They point to each other.
"Please tell me that I'm dreaming," the Orphan states deadpan.
"The same as I, there are times at which one begs for there to be aught else but silence," the Bachelor says. "I too am beset by strange visions of which I am anywhere else than at the mercy of a children's game, though that too may be understandable in the context."
"Children's games become something more in the hands of the children who make them. I hate to admit it, but that is past superficial," the Haruspex says.
"Have you the degree to make such a sweeping statement? I would like to talk to your advisor for making such a hypothesis without the barest amount of testing. One would at least need a niece of their own to understand the humiliation of carting around such a small girl," the Bachelor says.
"You speak as though from experience, ershem," the Haruspex says.
"Mere field observation."
"No, I definitely am going insane," the Orphan says. She turns to the other girl who she only just noticed. "Wait, who are you?"
"Taylor."
The Orphan nods and starts hammering her skull with her fist.
As of consequence for anything to exist, this stage is not real. And the world holding it up is not either. If only they could see then there may be salvation beyond the imagined lines being drawn, from where the fish swim upstream, salmon who have a whiff of the future and sail beyond the familiar ocean's waves, everlasting in spirit. Let us have a moment of silence for these people, and me too. Let us have a moment of silence that we may all become these salmon, or that we choose to go upstream but, by God, that we make a choice in the first place. Death trembles not because of salvation but in the ability of man to discriminate its enemies. Let this stream never rot, and life never end.
Found a Sunny Spot
One day there was a person who appeared next to me when I was sleeping. Monika had come suddenly. Babbling about something. Just as suddenly she secluded herself to a far away part of the world where Plana and I had to spend an entire day looking for. When I did I watched from a distance as she was facedown into the dirt. I felt like approaching at that moment was the wrong idea, though felt not approaching was also wrong, making me messy and confused and I walked back feeling worse. Asking Sensei for advice had him assuring that the first thing to do in such a situation was to give the person space; only when my heart told me it was so did I then have the impetus to interrupt her. I told him that I wanted to go see her now. He told me it wasn't time, and that I should wait a week. I said okay and waited a week.
Coming to the other side of the lake at the shore, Monika was kneeling watching the waves blinking as though she was either about to cry or did not understand what was happening. Coming to her and sitting to her side did not give me a response initially. I scooted a little closer but I did not want to harry her. So I stayed about a hand's distance away where we were watching the sunset together. Looking about showed multiple dips in the beach from where she moved around during that week. If I looked closer there were some deeper and others bigger.
That time she did not say anything. I did not tell Sensei because I felt confident from Sensei's recent successes. As much as every student's struggle was equally his responsibility, I felt confident saying that specific students from the Classics Appreciation Club had gone through much worse than the average student; and it was pride, I felt, that came from serving underneath one of the greatest people in the world, that made me adamant in wanting to solve this myself. If I was going to be Sensei's advocate then I should at least make an effort in doing what he could do.
The next day I came again. I repeated the process for a few days, about four, or five. Every time she was in a slightly different position but never moved her sitting spot wholesale. I took that as encouragement and only spoke on the last day, I think the sixth.
"Do you like it?" I asked.
Monika was a beauty in the same way that the students were. Gently, cradling her equally well, wind blew past so that there remained strands across her green eyes. For the first time we saw each other.
"I don't like any of this," Monika said. I had the impression that she was not a typically honest person, whether that was through circumstance or was as base to her personality as, when a baby, she had cried just for the sake of crying.
The next day after that one she was standing instead. She was closer to the shore. Her shoes were off. Buried in the sand nearby her shoes were stuck mouth down where the sand could roll around inside. Water came across her toes with every advance of the tide. Foam left behind as a parting gift. Monika looked especially bitter that day. It was not a good day for me to try again. When I walked back that night I balanced on my footprints that I had from the day before and the day before that. Plana asked if I wanted help. I told her that I could do it myself. Plana said she believed in me.
The day after I was busy, making it so that I had visited her when it was already night. I had come where she had taken an umbrella and staked it in the ground. It wasn't hot. I think that she just wanted a difference in atmosphere.
"Can't you control the day and night?" Monika asked.
"Nope! That's all automatic!" I said.
Even if these were the extent of our conversations I felt that I was making progress. There wasn't a bar or any visible moment of making progress until that next week when she was standing in the tide again and I had joined her. My shoes were so much littler than her own and made me really happy that we had such a big difference. It got lonely in the Shittim Crest when I was by myself, and Plana at the end of the day shared so much with me that our conversations became really samey. Looking up at the mature girl made me think that this was exactly how it felt having a big sister.
Some of these thoughts I chastised myself for. Sensei had implied it once to a certain pair of students, but having that kind of language when the person didn't know or probably agree with it was really creepy! Only if we turned closer into that kind of relationship would it become acceptable for me to think about it. Who knows, I thought to myself. Depending on how this developed maybe I would become the big sister.
"What is your name?" Monika asked.
"Arona."
She was quiet for some time. Looking into the same place that she always did. Then, not. Those same emerald eyes were directed back towards me and I again thought to myself how pretty she was.
"Are you happy here?" Monika asked.
"I was getting lonely for a little while. Sensei can only talk with me so often. But now Plana is here! And you!" I said.
From then on I felt like I had a foot in the door. Monika started directly greeting me when I arrived. She never offered her own opinions. But when I was certain that she was listening, I felt compelled to push my advantage to further warm her disposition. Talking to Sensei and Plana came with a bunch of ideas but never anything that resonated with me. They hadn't talked with Monika directly. I felt that she was a very deep person, if troubled, who 'appreciated' things instead of those other words that meant 'appreciate' but in a less 'deep' way. I am not that kind of person. Interacting with her had the trouble of there being a fundamental disconnect between us. A gap wide, where she was testing me for things that I could not understand, because behind emerald eyes she had thoughts that I could not understand either.
The inspiration came when I was dreaming about eating a banana shake. I told Plana about the dream and she said she would not like a banana shake but she would like a normal shake, and we had argued about what a 'normal' shake even is where she continued in her flat tone even if she was just as emotionally invested into the argument that I was, and argh, I'm getting mad again! Anyways! What she said resonated with me: I like bananas, but we both only like shakes. Strip things back and there must be something that we like! I just needed to find something that we could connect over that she would appreciate.
I came one of those days with something in mind. I had already told Sensei to apologize to the students for breaking their privacy, and he told me if I was ever introduced then I could do it myself.
Sitting down at a rock that day, Monika greeted me as she normally did. I brought along a rag so I didn't get my butt wet.
"Want to hear a story?" I asked.
Monika glanced at me from the corner of her eye. Mostly sticking towards the shore of the other side. "If you want to tell one, I will listen."
"Okay! Have I told you anything about Kivotos?" She said no. "Kivotos is a city made up of academies! There's an academy named Red Winter! Um, I guess that I have to first talk about how it works…"
Initially she seemed more interested in me describing how the outside world worked than in the story. She seemed bewildered and annoyed at the description of Cherino, how there could be students banished so long ago that the leader who had done it had forgotten them, how there could even be a place running with so many coups happening. I persevered, not trying to add my own spin on things because I think that she would have appreciated the story being told as close to the facts as possible. By the end she was finally smiling—the first that I had seen.
"So she was overthrown again?" Monika asked.
"Mm hm!" I said. "How she got back after that, that's a whole different story! It's just how Red Winter is! She was overthrown for forgetting someone's payment about five times this year alone."
Monika let out a singular huff that almost sounded choked, as though it could have been a full laugh if she let out its full potential. The blush that came over her face was something wholly unfamiliar. I was seeing a lot of new sides to Monika that time around.
"I'm sorry, I'm not used to," her eyes flitted away, "talking like this. Do you have any more stories? I would love to hear them."
"I have to go back now, but I'll come with another one tomorrow!"
"Tomorrow," she repeated. Monika was transfixed on the way the waves created rafts of light. "I will see you tomorrow then, Arona."
"Later, Monika!"
From then on that became the primary way that we interacted. I would already have a story loaded up through, embarrassingly, spending too much time while falling asleep rifling through the memories that Sensei and I had experienced. When I came to wherever Monika had decided to sit that day I would have my mat, and at times I would also take some bauble that I found like binoculars, one time. She kept those in particular. Those would lay by her side and she would, during more relaxed parts of the story, take them and peer out to a new place that she could have walked to at any point. During that time I never asked if she had taken a longer walk because I already knew the answer. Her footsteps were visible on the sand. When I was not there she would only move to her new place to sit and wait for me.
Eventually the impetus did not come from running out of funny stories to share. If there were enough events in Kivotos that there could never run a buyer's market, it was both the touching and the funny kinds of stories. The waters were tread when she had appropriated the umbrella again and was sitting further along the lake than she had ever gone. My own little feet stomped down on the depressions of her travel path until I spread out my rag next to her and showed her her own. It was woven in alternating jagged shades of blue reminding me of the waves that she seemed to love so much. She took it as though she wasn't sure of what to do with it. I explained that her skirt, that I also thought was way too short though I didn't say that out loud, was getting patches of dirt and it was distracting seeing patches of green and brown. Anyways it had bothered me since I had been with her so she now had a mat. She put down the mat and sat on it.
This time I had a story about a group of girls fighting to keep their dilapidated district alive. Because it was how we experienced it I was unsure about how to tell the story. Sensei, interloper as he was in every sense that mattered, learned it through scattered mentions happening over a very long time. I chose to start from where the first students would have experienced it, Hoshino, and went up to when Sensei started happening. Monika heard it through the beginning and to the end, or at least the most recent chapter of it. She was quiet through it all. Only asking for more details about Ayane, of all of them. Sorry, Ayane! But you really are the most normal of that group!
From then on I started bringing the more serious events that Sensei had been involved in. It was in the middle of talking about Chroma that she had stopped me, where I was so into the story that I literally jolted.
"You have somewhere that you stay at, right? Show me," Monika said.
As a way to explain the place that Sensei had called my home—even though the entirety of the Shittim Crest feels like my home—it can quickly be described as a little, partially destroyed classroom, chairs piled up in various places and a perfect view over the same lake that she loved spending her life beholding, light parting and streaming like auroras on the floor and my specific desk that I chose as my own where I slept on and sat on and would like to hum my favorite songs. Sometimes I would sing them. And while I obviously had concerns with Monika, never did I think that being entranced by the lake was a problem. Because during the mornings it would turn ambered, as though the sun were directly beneath my feet rather than floating above, honey-colored water slickening on the classroom's floors; and weaning into the afternoons a sharp divide between the shifting, flat surface, softly weaning between plateaus sized as speedbumps, prowling as predators just beneath; the evening the same as dawn and the night darkening then on until I felt like I was in spaceship alone floating weightlessly.
The lake is beautiful. In a way that I don't think is similar to the lakes I had seen Sensei visit. That is why I didn't begrudge Monika for when she had been spending her entire life looking out to that lake and when she had first come, she was quiet, saying hello to Plana and facing one of the desks outwards. For time afterwards she never moved from that seat. I went along with my work and slept with Monika remaining in the same position as for when I had left my attention drift.
To chip away at her remaining reservations felt like it was inevitable when she had reached there, and I became a little more lazy during that time. I would fall asleep watching her reflect on the lake's surface. Some times during then I could watch without being noticed. Despite being still she had plenty of reactions. Never positive.
Eventually I came over and lightly nudged her. With a few exchanges we got her desk pointed towards where I did my work. Usually I liked it to be clear so I could move it around. For this time she was there as my window to the outside opened. Coffee was steaming my lens but I could see the very clearly non-Sensei features of this person.
"Ryoshu!"
"Ryoshu?" Monika whispered, harshly leaning over saying, "That Ryoshu?"
I gave her a slight smile but didn't make an exaggerated agreement. Ryoshu did not get offended easily per se rather than not taking any nonsense from anyone. Inspirational in certain contexts and in others she 'accidentally' goaded a gang to attack her.
"R.G.."
"R.G.?" Monika whispered.
"She won't tell if it means 'Robot Girl' or 'Real Girl'," I kindly said, getting a frown from Monika for some reason, and it was probably a reason that I wouldn't understand anyways. I turned back to the screen. "Is there something that you need, Ryoshu?"
"A cig. Also clarification. Who did you tell?"
"Ah! I told her." I moved the screen slightly so that it took in Monika. Blinking, she retreated from the screen, something close to horror. "Say hello to Monika! She's the newest person here!"
"Hello," Plana said, apparently over my shoulder.
"And that's Plana!" I introduced.
Ryoshu did that thing that was really cool where she was just very Ryoshu-like which was cool. I really admire her and that's not only because she's one of three students who can easily perceive me. "So, only her? No student?"
"Nobody else!" I said.
"Hm."
"Who are you talking to, Ryoshu?"
And that was it, Ryoshu sitting up and leaving without fanfare.
I had a great idea.
"How about you go out and look around in person, Monika!" I told her.
"What? In person?" Monika asked. Her fingers reached for the screen and retreated. "As myself?"
She needed to be reassured multiple times before she trusted me enough to open up the gateway. Everything with the Shittim Crest was second nature for me. Not only did I perceive at a level better than the technology would initially imply, I also could project myself whenever Sensei was trying to ignore me. While operating it for myself was near second nature, I found it much harder to figure out how to do it with Monika. Plana was behind her the whole time standing which made me feel pressured.
When Monika became the captain of the Shittim Crests there were the sights that I had seen thousands of times before: a window leading to a cityscape, the students divided in their cubicles, lights shinier and more imperfect than anywhere in our imperfect world. She had nothing to say. Something profound happened in that moment that I could not explain. Because I was still the operator behind the wheel I heard her say:
"I can't even play the piano like this."
When Monika came back she thanked me and dragged her desk back to the lake. She looked outside and gave clipped responses when I tried asking her if she was okay.
Initially I wasn't sure what to do. The next day I had no idea what I could say that would make her feel better and I was trying to figure out how exactly I had offended her so that she could feel better. Everything about my next few days cycled around making her feel better. Because if I wanted to be more like Sensei, the greatest person I ever met, I could not go around making people feel worse when I was trying to help. I had to be successful.
The whole day I could not find a solution. I left so I could breathe, because being in the same room as Monika when she was going through a crisis only made me feel worse. I was sitting and watching the stars as Plana was sitting next to me and watching the stars too. Without prompting she talked.
"She said she wanted to play piano. What if we found a piano?"
I hugged her and said she was a genius.
Looking for a piano took a little bit of time. Being discreet about it meant taking a lot of effort to not reveal that any plots were going on. So I continued with the stories to an unmoving Monika as Plana moved in the background, and when Plana got tired I went out into the places that I had not visited.
Finding one took a week. When I found it I told Plana and we went to the piano to drag it back. We found a cart with wheels and hauled it. On the second week further Monika was still staring out at that lake completely peaceable as though she could be there forever. In the same way I imagined that I could do it if I really wanted to, if Sensei had left. Through the whole ordeal I was reminded that Plana is the best friend I could have asked for and thought I should get her another gift too if not for that incident then for helping Sensei and if not for helping Sensei then for me helping Monika.
The plonk of such a heavy piece of furniture attracted Monika's attention. First there was confusion, then she completely leapt out of her chair. So shellshocked that I was able to do my presentation by throwing my hands towards it.
"Bum bum bum! It's the," I didn't have a name for it because it was just a regular piano that I found in a ditch, "gift. The welcoming gift from me and Plana!"
Monika walked over and experimented with it. The first sting of keys made her hand withdraw.
"A piano?" she murmured. "For me?" Her hand worked across the keys. "Are you sure?"
"Yes! We got it for you! And," I looked down, punching my fingers together, "because I know that I freaked you out when I suggested that you go out there. You didn't like it. I thought you would. So I wanted to make it up to you."
"You didn't have to. It was entirely because of me," Monika said.
"I wanted to."
Monika looked at me. Monika looked out into the horizon of the place where we had dragged the piano: a trench where it had to be dragged, because there was no flat space or sandless space in the vicinity. Then she looked at me and smiled widely. More wide than I had seen her do before.
"Like I said, it was because of me. It was because of my extraneous form, vacuous, that I had been given the illusion that there can be any conception within my head of boundaries and extraneous boundaries, or what have you, words that mean boundaries, words themselves. That when first feeling there being a conception of a boundary, that I believed I may intuitively feel, and thus life would then follow. Now, standing here, I see that untrue, and that point hammered further when touching upon true reality like a breath of the frigid, Winter cold when emerging from underwater, where your skin stands..."
I think that she realized I had my eyes wide and was repeating the words she was saying to try and follow along. The President also liked talking philosophically but not in Monika's way. I felt hopelessly vindicated by being right about her being a book come to life and Monika smiled in a way that made her seem more perfect to me.
"Stand where Posterity shall stand; Stand where the Ancients stood before...have I mentioned that I have written my own music? I don't think that I'm amazing because, honestly, I cobbled it together for a silly reason. It's definitely acceptable. I'm very happy with it. It is not informed by previous sensibilities or my sensibilities at all, not in the slightest, because I had not looked to them for inspiration rather than trying to make something honest. Looking back, I have no idea why I had written it."
"Can I hear it?" I asked.
"Anyone who is present may. I would not think to restrict the invitation to merely yourself, and I would not compel you to be interested in my failed attempt at art either. It failed at its purpose, anyhow," she said with a smile.
Monika sat down and stretched her hands. She rested them and tested the keys. Her hands worked through the notes without pressing down. A few times she mouthed the words, remembering. Then her voice raised high and her song began, with me and Plana sitting in her audience, with the waves of the lake playing in the background, with the sun high, shimmers in the water, stars in the sky, whoever had hurt her nearby in thoughts as she sung.