Ethereal
Banned Member
Found this cutie and I really want to give her another burst of life. I have some ideas already.
Their player hasn't visited the site in two years.
Their player hasn't visited the site in two years.
"OHMYFISHIES," exclaimed Konoka, dropping the rag she was washing the table with in shock when Moe introduced herself.
"YOUARESOCUTEICOULDDIEEEEEEE!" she squeed, before ducking down and sitting criss-cross-applesauce so as to be closer to Moe's eye level.
"You're a CHIBI," she grinned. "I like chibis. I'm Miyazawa Konoka, Joto Hei, at your ADORABLE service!"
Then, she looked at the chopsticks Moe held.
"You sure you can handle those, Chibi-Hei?" she asked, cocking her head in concern.
A voice calling from the kitchen set a chill in the air.
"Would the person whom just did the death scream come and see me, please?" Kotori said over the tumult of her work in the kitchen.
However, it didn't sound like a request.
"Err....is Ohimesama she talking about me?" Konoka blinked. "Was I really that loud? I'm sorry. Didn't even notice!" She bowed politely in apology to those around her who had told her not to shout, like Kyoka and Akiko.
Then, she looked back to Moe. "Don't call me ma'am," she pouted. "Look, I'm glad you can take care of the chopsticks. Good for you! I only asked if you could handle it outta concern. Cuz I wanna be your friend. Cuz like I said you're adorable."
Here, Konoka's voice took on a slightly shriller pitch and she pointed a finger sharply at Moe.
"I don't see why you seem so upset that I called you that. It's not an insult. It's a compliment. If I wanted to insult you I wouldn't call you an adorable Chibi. I'd call you a popcorn shrimp!"
A brief pause.
"You little popcorn shrimp."
Without another word, she walked past her, head held high, into the kitchen to go see what Kotori wanted.
When Konoka reached the kitchen, she found Kotori dicing down some vegetables rather finely. With Konoka making her entry, the princess acknowledged the medic's arrival with a sidelong glance and then looked back to where she was chopping.
The speed and precision of her cuts we're impressive. Whether it be due to her samurai upbringing, or lots of practice, the princess was very dexterous with the kitchen knife.
Then she spoke: "I heard your crewmates call you Miyazawa Konoka. That is your name?"
"Yes, Ketsurui-himesama, that's me!" Konoka replied, bowing deeply, one curious eye on that knife.
"Forgive me," she added. "Have I not properly introduced myself to you before? I thought I had. Anyway, I'm a Joto Hei, a medic, and at your service!"
She smiled brightly.
"Now, what can I do for you, Ohimesama? Besides working on that table, which I was already doing before I guess I got a little loud. Sorry about that. And sorry for asking you so many questions earlier."
Kotori turned her head to look more directly at Konoka, brow slightly furrowed. "Yes, you have, when your group visited me at the Samurai House. But my only true exchange with you before today involved a riceball. It felt proper to start anew."
Even though the princess wasn't looking at what she was doing anymore, the knife kept working equally quickly, sliding the hashed vegetables aside to then work on what looked like fried chicken.
"Might I ask your age?"
"Ah...." Konoka found herself bowing again. "I'm really sorry again about that rogue onigiri, Ketsurui-himesama! They're so slippery...."
When she looked up again, a curious expression crossed her emerald eyes. "My age?" she blinked. Nobody had ever felt the need to ask her this before.
Many, Konoka was sure, assumed she was very young because of the way she acted. In truth, she was one of the oldest neko on the ship (Weren't most of the crew around 2 or 3? Less?) . She'd been in the SAOY longer than quite a few officers she'd met. Her friend Sune, who had joined a year after her, and like her, started out as a simple medic, she'd heard, had just received his own command. What was he now - a Chusa? And her other friend, Ramiro, who had also joined over a year after her - he'd even become a teacher to new recruits for awhile.
But Konoka, who had been there so long and experienced so many battles, was still only a lowly Hei. It made her sad....when Konoka LET herself be sad, that is, which wasn't often. Konoka believed that if she kept being chipper, kept being loud, she wouldn't have time to think of all the friends who had found success and left her behind.
Her thoughts again turned to Sune. He had one of Konoka's best friends on the Eucharis, and they'd been assigned to join the Byakuren together. Then he'd ditched that assignment and gone off on his own, leaving Konoka with a bunch of strange, confusing new people.
But Konoka supposed she should be used to it. When one lived as long as her, one would watch a lot of friends leave. More recently, there had been Akemi, who Konoka heard was a pop star now.
Everyone seemed to be doing so well. But Konoka just kept screwing up. She'd insulted the mini neko out there and suspected Kotori might be mad at her too.
None of Konoka's heavy thoughts, however, showed on her face. They never did. She continued to give Kotori a sparkly smile as she said, "I am six years old, ma'am."
Slowing down, Kotori's knife carefully diced the small piece of chicken meat smaller. She quietly regarded Konoka as the pink-haired neko gave her short answer.
"I am not your captain," Kotori told her. "You are a soldier, but you are not under my direct authority. I am not here to police you. But at the same time, I am a Ketsurui princess, and the Ketsurui clan looks after the people of Yamatai. You are included in that extended family."
The princess' expression became pained, sympathetic. "If I was you, there would be no way I would not be hurting. I'd be brave. I wouldn't want to trouble to anyone else. But at six years old, left behind as a Hei, after having faced with so much suffering by Hanako's side... there would be no way I'd be happy with myself."
"Tell me what is wrong, Konoka-san." Kotori asked. "I already know that squeaky excitable chatterbox whom calls somuch attention to herself is not who you want to be. What are you missing?"
Konoka's eyes widened, and, for once in her life, she was speechless. The well crafted smile she always wore was gone.
That felt...wrong to her. Through six years of toil, through watching friends die or ditch her, through dying at least three times already, through being regarded as a simpleton and a child and left in the dust by everyone she ever knew, Konoka had never once stopped smiling.
Didn't anyone ever wonder why Konoka had to be the center of attention all the time? Had to have the last and loudest word?
Of course they didn't. They thought that childish exuberance came from her not have been kicked around by life enough to develop a serious or dark side.
That couldn't be further from the truth. Konoka had suffered much, and the sugar high persona she built up was, in fact, directly because of it. Konoka believed that if she never stopped moving, never stopped talking, never stopped smiling, never sat still, that she'd never have time to think about how disappointing her life had turned out. She'd never have time to be sad.
The truth, however, was that Konoka did have a core of sadness and seriousness hidden deep under the layers of candy addled happy - go -luckyness she'd refused to shed for so long.
But Kotori, in the course of one question, had found that core and brought it to the surface.
Konoka's first reaction to this was anger. Her hands clenched into shaking fists. This....flying fish....Kotori barely knew her, and she automatically assumes something's missing in Konoka's life? That she knew anything about Konoka? The nerve!
Konoka could very well be happy as a squeaky excitable chatterbox, for all she knew!
But she was right. Konoka wasn't happy.
So the tiny fists unclenched and the anger faded, to be replaced by an urge to cry, and then an urge to try very hard not to.
"H-how did you know?" Konoka demanded. "How....how can you, in the shortest little conversation like EVER, see straight into someone's soul like that, Ketsurui-himesama? How?"
She continued to fight the buried sadness preparing to drip out of her. To try and put that big smile back on her face. But it wouldn't come back. Why? Where had that smile gone?
"See," she muttered bitterly. "This is what happens when you let your smile slip away. What a miserable conversation."
"Yes, Ketsurui-himesama, I am hurting," Konoka finally admitted. "But I don't know what thinking about it will do for me, because I don't know how to stop it. What am I missing? I've been trying to figure that out forever. What I do know is what I don't have. I don't have the rank, the success, or the fame of so many friends that joined up with the Star Army so long after me. And I dont know why. I don't have any people that have stuck around me for a long time, or who truly know me, And I don't know why. I don't know why I don't have half the things other neko my age have. I don't....I don't have much. And fine. I confess, it's troubling. All I have - I try to just be happy with what I have, because I've never been able to attain anything else - is my medical work and my smile. Well....now, just the work."
"Why has it turned out this way?" she asked, not even caring if she got an answer. She was just happy to finally ask the question aloud which had reverberated silently in her head, buried under candy coated fake smiles, for so long.
"I know because I am nekovalkyrja," Kotori somberly answered. "And at your age, our lives have been watered with blood, tears and suffering. I know because I am a princess, and it is my job to figure these kind of things out. If I cannot understand my people, how can I represent them?"
The next piece of meat to be visited by the knife as a bit of squid, which Kotori also finely diced.
"The 'why' of how you came to be this way is not for me to answer," the princess told Konoka. "Nor do I think it wise to dwell overly on the question, most especially if it evokes melancholy and self-pity in you. That, I am unwilling to indulge."
"The real question, Konoka-san, lies in what you want. Not what you are missing. What you want and what you are ready to do to achieve it. All too often, we fail in life because we allowed ourselves the room for failure. What does it take to remove that room for failure?"
"What do I want?" Konoka replied. "I want all those things I said others have that I do not. I want....success. Rank. Fame. People who stick around. To be understood. To grow up. To matter. Most of all, I want respect."
Respect was in short supply for Konoka, and she knew it. Opinions of her ranged from "child like", to "friendly", to "amusing but stupid", to "derpy". She had always known this. It had always been this way. But Konoka was not only that ditzy person.
She was a talented medic, who had healed a Geshrin missing the entire bottom half of his body on her first day aboard the Eucharis, six years ago. Who had performed cybernetic eye surgery on a Nepleslian. Who had analyzed the first-ever discovered NMX pill bug and discerned their diet and reproductive processes (they ate silicon and bred rapidly and had she not figured this out they would have eaten the Eucharis in its entirety. She was never credited for this, while her her friend Sune had gained recognition in the scientific community for analyzing what factors moved the bugs from dormancy to an active state).
She was a brave soldier, who had had all the teeth knocked out of her mouth by a blast from an NMX cannon, who had been killed by Rippers on Sbufaba, who had been pushed out of an orbiting ship into a planets atmosphere by a crazy SAINT officer (and not complained , even though a similar push killed a Geshrin quartermaster), who had infiltrated Veritas to save its VIPs and gotten shot full of BBs in every discernible body part (and still managed to give directions to a wayward sprite), who had found a clone of Hanako and then ST'd her into the real one's mind, who had been in the Battles of Veritas, Elysia Novus, Nataria, and Yamatai.
She was a grown woman, which none but Akiko seemed to notice.
She had earned respect, hasn't she?
"How do I get it?"
"By understanding where your efforts to change will be the most effective," Kotori answered, putting the knife down.
She turned away from Konoka, investigating nearby drawers in search of something.
"You need to be aware that changing won't be easy, and will not happen overnight. Above all, many things and circumstances will be in opposition to you, namely the opinions other people have already formed of you."
In one drawer, Kotori found what she was looking for: toothpicks. She gathered an handful an returned to the counter where she was dicing things.
"In fact, you'll find that you have absolutely no control at all on anything else but yourself. Understanding that is key to your victory. You may not be able to do anything about the actions of others, but you can do something about your own. That, in fact, is all you need to have others respond to you. The trick is deciding what you want them to respond to, and then you've already won 'half the battle', so to speak."
Konoka saw Kotori wield one toothpick, and then use it to stab amongst the different ingredients she had cut in slices or small cubes, coming to the realization that Kotori was making brochettes. Miniature brochettes.
"You say people treat you like a child. Can you tell me what you think it would be like, to be treated like a grown woman? What do you think Konoka the woman should be like? What would you want to be like?"
"What would Grown Up Konoka be like?" Konoka found she had to think about this. "Someone...someone who is respected for her work. A leader. Somebody younger neko look up to. A mentor. An oneesan type."
Yeah. Konoka could see that. That was what she had wanted people to think of her: A great medic who helped her patients. A soldier admired for her field experience. Someone who, still, got along well with rookies, but could guide them instead of being guided by them.
She still wanted to be never too serious. She still wanted to be beloved. But maybe beloved in a way other than as a precocious child, which was the only love Konoka had ever experienced.
"Yeah. That's what I want. And I'm gonna try and get it! You'll see!"
Kotori nodded her approval. "Good, but be careful: your answer focuses much more on the result rather than the kind of person you wish to be."
"To me, it sounds like the answer would be for you to have both poise and composure," the princess told the pink-haired medic. "Taking that into account to shape how you present yourself to others will likely go a long way into helping you achieve those goals. Most of that only requires some forethought."
The black-haired Ketsurui gave Konoka an encouraging smile, and then said: "Now, brunch is just about ready. Could you please head back out to make sure everything is ready? I'll be out myself in just a moment."
"Hai!" replied Konoka with a determined smile, before walking - calmly for once - back into the wardroom.
"Tsubei-Juni, Akiko-Heisho, Narita-Hei!" Konoka called in a surprisingly reserved, quiet tone. "Have you guys finished setting up?"
To the others, she merely said sedately, "Ketsurui-Hime says the food will be done soon."
Kyลko shot Konoka a wide grin when she saw that the pink-haired medic appeared not to have suffered after being called in by Kotori.
"Good to see you're still in one piece," She said in a low voice to Konoka once she got closer; speaking quietly so as not to be overheard by the officers.
The fiery-haired neko gave Konoka a quizzical look, with her head slightly tilted to the side as she considered the medic for a second time. While she outwardly seemed fine, it hadn't skipped Kyลko's notice that Konoka had spoken at a more normal speed and in a less 'bubbly' fashion than was typical.
"Are you alright?" She asked softly, her eyes revealing her concern at difference in the neko's behaviour. Though she hadn't heard any yelling, Kyลko feared that perhaps Kotori had chewed Konoka out for acting in her usual exuberant manner.
Konoka blinked at Kyoko. "No, I'm fine," she smiled. "I actually just had a real nice heart to heart with Kotori-hime. She's actually really nice once you get to know her! And I can't wait to try her cooking!"
A serious expression crossed Konoka's face for a moment. "She gave me some really good advice on where I should go with my life."
Then, the seriousness faded as quickly as it had come, and Konoka merrily waved to the others as if nothing had happened.
But something had. A change had definitely come over Konoka. And it was here to stay.
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