RP: YSS Miharu Mission 5, Aftermath

Asher chuckled again, throwing a side-long glance to Kyou. He shook his head and sighed, looking back through the observation one more time. The Malifarian seemed to consider her words, rubbing just below his chin, catching a few stray hairs on his chin-spike. He had to admit, it was awfully awkward to keep it up for so long, and he had figured that Hinoto didn't figure for him to stay silent for so long. Still, he found a sort of peace in keeping his words to himself, something he didn't get to experience often. It was something that let him understand the weight of an action compared to the weight of words.

Understanding things is kind of boring anyway, at least to Asher. He still needed to figure out what Vaaker Take-up meant.

"Well." his first words in two-days were a little weak, but they gained the spice and volume that were iconic of his out-of-place accent as he went on. "Can't say I don't mind ya, Gunny. What wit' what we been troo', you cn'interrupt me anytime." He gave her a funny grin, chuckling through his teeth. "Hell, y'cn even join in if y'want."

Kyou arched her eyebrow, pushing her still messy hair back with one hand. "I don't think I'll be joining in on much of anything just yet. More fun to interrupt, for the time being." She sighed, tilting her head back to look straight up. "Plus, I'm much too tired for anything like that. Holes in my chest, and all that." She was glad Asher had decided to break his silence, one way or another. It would've been just as bad as sitting in her bed if he didn't feel like talking.

"Yeah, I can see where y'come from there. My whole fuckin' body aches." said Asher patting his side, where the NIWS had blown a hole out of his armor and into one of his muscles. The Malifarian grunted a little bit as he shifted around. "I still think mosta' my bones iss' still meldin' back t'getha'."

He put his hands back down in his lap, leaning forward to look back out into the stars, resting his elbows on his knees.

"I'd say we got off betta' than most." Asher looked over at Kyou's chest, "Well, I did, at least." He continued to look at her chest. "Y'know, I always wonda'd. If y'get stabbed in tha' tit, does it pop or somethin'?"

@Nimura

Nyton's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at Nimura's downcast expression. "Considering that I almost won, even if you had lured me away there were still too many flaws with the plan. Melisson would have probably delighted in exposing you anyways." he said with a sigh.

"I may not be the majority of the crew but I believed that you were more than just the 'ice cold bitch' Nimura. For what it is worth I would have missed you. Being alive and free now means you have the chance to experience what Ichigo has and can no longer do so for herself. Rather than entertain thoughts of pretending to be Ichigo to spare the feelings of others you could explore who you are. In doing so others may know of just how magnificent a person you can be." Nyton then offered.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

@Nao

"Nao-chan, you're so cute! C'mon c'mon! Let's get going! Want to ride on the cart? Onee-chan can push!" Akiko said cheerfully while giggling.

Shizuka chuckled a bit and the sisters began to guide Nao towards the kitchen.

"Oh, what would you like to eat Nao-chan?" Shizuka asked while they traveled together. On the way they tried to spot any other crewmembers who may be in need of a break.

Kyou shook her head, chuckling. "Not that I noticed, no. Not that I really got stabbed there. It was a bit above there, in my case." She tapped above her bust, right along the collarbone, then patted her side as well. "I hear you though. My side is still a bit sore too. Missed everything important, but still." She looked down at her chest. "I'm glad everything is intact though. Probably be painful as hell to fix something like that."

"I'd figya in tha' case a'you Nekos, all it'd take iss' some duct-tape an'a bike-pump. I mean, you shoulda' seen Koto-Boss when she got her jaw half-ripped off. Me n'Clay-boss tore out the inserts a'Meni n'Mani's arma, and she put that blood on'r face. Then boom, a scabby new jaw." said Asher, rubbing his thumb against the line of his chin. He leaned back on the couch again, his arms still resting in his lap. Those blood-red eyes went back in her direction again, somewhat tiredly inspecting her. "But, I do hate I didn' have ya wit' me in that last part a'tha fight. Tha' way you'n me cleaned house before y'went down, we probably woulda' killed Melibutt n'Mepubatuba in record time."

He placed a hand on her shoulder, patting it lightly. His face twisted a little, bit of strain pulling at his expression.

"But. I'm glad y'still kickin'."

"I... I know. It's just... can't believe they're gone." Rin shifted in her bed as she stopped to wipe tears from her eyes. The next words seemed to get caught in her throat. She clenched her eyes shut as she sniffled.

"...I wish that I could have at least said goodbye.... I didn't get to say goodbye to any of them."

@Shizuka and Akiko

'Cute? I'm cute?' Nao asked herself, as one ear drooped slightly while the other rose in confusion. 'I don't remember anyone saying that...it was always "bitch" or "hardass" when my back was turned, and just my name or rank to my face.' The offer for a ride however, shook her out of her reverie; they were waiting. And it was likely against regulation. 'Isn't it?' She asked herself again, wondering, eyeballing the cart; truth be told, she was now rather hesitant. 'What am I getting myself into?' the young sprite wondered. It was all coming at her so fast!

"Um - " She had to think fast! "Won't my weight break it or something?" Nao asked the two. Before they could answer though, Nao's mind had already realized something terrible. "Wait! I'm not heavy!" As if to prove it, she gently mantled into the cart. Hurrah! It didn't break! 'Yet.' A little voice crept about in the back of her mind. This new fear however, caused Nao to hunker down inside the cart, her hands grasping the side as she just peeked over the edge.

Food. "Well, I'm not too hungry so I'll have something sma - " Like in a cartoon from Yamatai that she had never watched before, Nao's stomach growled right then and there. 'Right...how long have I been working? I guess doing stuff keeps that at bay...' Both her ears drooped along with her little antenna of hair as she was left abashed. 'Fine. I'm hungry, she admitted to herself.' Nao would have something larger to eat after all, but what? 'Something simple so they won't have to work too much...maybe a...'

"Maybe just a gyudon?" This was all odd. It was all so, so...no, it wasn't frustrating, or annoying. It was a little similar in some ways, just a wee bit, but it was definitely something all on its own. At this point though, something dawned on her.

'Was this what you did every day Junko? Was ever day, or even some days, or even rare days like this for you?'

@Nao

As soon as Nao climbed into the cart Akiko hopped in with her. The cart was a simple four wheeled hand cart used to transport medium to large sized cargo containers. The frame was approximately five feet long, four feet wide, with thin three foot high walls on all four sides. It was metallic gray with two handles coated with rubber grips. The quarters were close but both neko were able to squeeze in comfortably. Akiko tried to fit behind Nao while holding the broom out like a jousting lance.

Shizuka shrugged but did not show any disdain towards her younger sister's silly notion. "Very well then Nao-chan. Gyudon awaits!" she said, getting into the moment.

Akiko then shouted, "Ready!"

Shizuke followed with, "Set!"

"Ikuze onee-chan!" Akiko cheered.

The cart then took off with Shizuka pushing at full speed down the hall towards the kitchen.

"Well, let me tell you, getting stabbed and going down was not in my plans either. Wasn't too comfortable, either. I got lucky nothing worse happened while I was paralyzed. As for the hemosynth... Ugh. Regardless of how well it works, it's bathing in blood, no matter how you look at it. It's just weird. And creepy." Kyou flinched away from his hand at first, but settled down after just a moment. "I'm glad almost everyone made it back okay though. The fact we made it back with as few losses as we did..."

"Yeah..." said Asher, responding a little to the change in direction for the conversation. His hand slipped off her shoulder, and found it's way back in his lap with the other one. "Y'know, I remember juss' a few days ago, I wass' speakin' on n'off wit' Mara..." Those red eyes of his began to focus on a particular star outside the window. There was a bit of tension in that stare, which his fingers followed by interlocking together.

A short silence followed, which broke with his next words.

"I talk all big'n'bad 'bout how 'iss honorable t'die in battle, n'I always play off death pretty easy. Mos' people think I don' feel it, n'othas'd probably call me somethin' heartless, but iss' juss' how I am." Asher's eyes trailed back down to the floor, somewhat shamefully, in a way. "I'm not sad that Mara's dead, or Ichigo's dead, or that anybodies dead. They all died doin' what they wanted, and died protectin' what they loved most. Each one wass' an' honorable death, somethin' every soldia' should aspire ta', just t'have at least one thin' t'keep'm fightin'." He sighed, "But it don' mean I don' miss'm."

@Nyton:

Nimura stared thoughtfully into Nyton's eyes. She hesitated a second before claiming: "This confrontation with Melisson... it changed you, Taii. You seem much more careworn than this morning."

She paused and then said: "You weren't just unconscious when I protected you from the Elites sent to process you. Just... what happened to you?"

Nimura and Hinoto had both retained consciousness during that episode, and thus had a bit of an outsider's perspective on what befell those trapped in Melisson's imposed mindvistas.

At this point, Nao was pretty nervous.

'Sharp turn, sharp turn! Ahhh!' The turns and bends of the ship's halls put Shizuka through her paces, especially considering how fast they were moving. 'This has so got to be against regulation! Against regulation!' Nao's standing thread of hair bobbled with the small bumps that the cart hit as they moved. Akiko's Lance gently moved up and down to the rhythm, almost as though a horse's hooves propelled them down an untraveled path. For Nao, it was almost certainly that.

Eventually though, the nervousness died down in Nao's belly, and her eyes began to feast on the blending colors of the background as it all flowed by quickly.

"Faster!"

Nakamura Kai. The sight of that man, full and healthy, standing there in uniform like nothing had happened at all just as handsome as the day that Yuzuki had first met the pilot, caused her soul to resonate. It was not a painful feeling, though it did sting. It was like being beat to death with velvet - not that she had any idea, but it did seem like the correct analogy.

It also warmed her cheeks, coloring her face and her neck a pale rose as she blushed furiously, suddenly aware of everything at once but with no idea of where to look. Yuzuki found herself looking at Miyoko. She registered the sensor specialist's offer, and her ears perked up.

"Thank you," she managed, eyes darting over Miyoko's facial structure briefly, keenly aware of Kai's attention. The other nekovalkyrja was certainly beautiful. Right-sized. Not awkward at all. Even the way she spoke was pretty. Yuzuki was painfully cognizant of the difference between the two of them. It was a fairly large gap, after all.

Yuzuki suddenly realized that she'd left her mouth slightly open. She shut it.

She had to think about moving. Yuzuki didn't like having to think about moving. But when she turned her head back towards Kai, and forced herself to look him in the eyes, the sprite was glad for the control it afforded her. Tearless, she met his gaze, and only glanced away once. It was the hair. It made him look, well - it wasn't that she didn't like it. It was that...

She'd cut it. She'd cut it, and it was still there, and there was a corpse in the bay. Yuzuki met his eyes again, bravely.

This was the same Kai. Yuzuki was too pragmatic to believe anything different - Junko had come back just the same, and had even talked a little about her experience with death, so Yuzuki didn't worry about the myriad of questions that soul savior technology elicited. It was all immaterial because whatever a person chose to believe it worked. What did bother her, what pained her, was that Kai wouldn't remember anything. The most warm, intimate moments of Yuzuki's life were doomed to be unshared. For Kai, those things, those bits of memory flotsam that kept Yuzuki afloat in this tempest tossed jaunt through watery horror-inducing dream-raping hell, had never happened.

To her, Kai was... something special. But to Kai, she was probably just another nekovalkyrja on a ship full of nekovalkyrja - Just another sprite who he could talk to about his family and his absurd plans for mechanical walking coffee tables. That's what Yuzuki was - a coffee table Nekovalkyrja. Just one in a million trillian billion.

Snap out of it, Yuzu.

"Yea," Yuzuki answered, tearing her eyes off of him and beginning to walk, "I got a while. Let's go to the armor bay. I found your armor, yesterday."

She tried to act normal. To walk normal. To be normal, as if nothing had happened at all between them. At any time.

But after turning a corner in a daze, halfway to the armor bay, she bumped into a low, unsecured trouble light and realized that her body wasn't agreeing with her, her temperature was rising, and she was, at best, a couple of seconds away from breaking down in front of the only real person who had ever just accepted her as she was.

She rubbed her head, and covered her eyes, and just stood there.

She'd compose herself. She had to compose herself.

"Ita."

@Rin:

Hinoto inched closer and enfolded Rin in her arms in a gentle embrace, cradling the head of the younger sprite just under her chin.

"I understand," Hinoto told her faintly. "Sometimes, though, the ones that you can say goodbye to are the hardest. They're the ones whom knew they would be gone, and went anyways."

"That's how Mara left me. By smiling bravely before leaving, knowing there would be no coming back, to manually detonate Miharu's last surviving aether generator," the snowy-haired sprite continued softly. "She saved us all by giving her the opportunity to escape with our lives, our mission complete."

Kai watched Yuzuki's awkwardness- apparently she had been affected by... something. does she really not like my hair long? was cutting it really that big a deal? he pondered as she responded to his question, and then began moving before he could begin any kind of discourse. he followed along, quietly, truthfully interested in the state of his armor that had both served him well and been his coffin once- nearly twice. However, he was more interested in the person before him. While it was true he had lost a lot of the connection he'd had to the Nekovalkyrja due to the loss of memories after a swift stab to the brain killed his original person, it was also true that anything that had happened during that time came out of pre-existing feelings. The fact that Kai did not realize this had very little to do with the matter at hand.

She turned a corner, and before Kai could round it, he heard a dull 'Thunk' signifying Yuzuki had hit something, before he too rounded the corner and stopped short, looking on as she rubbed her head, seeming dazed.

"Are you alright?" he asked, simply, approaching, not taking his eyes off of the Nekovalkyrja in front of him.

@Nimura

Nyton stared back at Nimura for several moments. His expression had become somber yet difficult to read while he gathered his thoughts.

Sadness? Relief? Joy? Guilt?

It was like his face registered all of them and none of them. Finally he spoke, his voice sounding tired. "That is hard to say. It is as though nothing and everything happened. Melisson subjected each of us to visions and nightmares. I suppose they were meant to entertain her while she watched us desperately writhe inside of them. Within the span of maybe a minute I relived my childhood, raised a family, crossed multiple universes, and deconstructed myself before Kotori-dono arrived to break us free. During the liberation we could all see and understand each others minds and thoughts."

A brief pause and Nyton appeared to be agonizing over his next words. "These were not just simple dreams. They felt like reality. I could recall history and events that shaped them. There was a feeling as though a passage of time had occurred. Thoughts that I had long ago buried were now resurfaced and I find myself forced to analyze and process them."

The fingers on Nyton left hand clenched a little. A twisting sensation ran through his chest as the words began tumbling out. "I was almost a father once, Nimura. But she died while still only a few months pregnant. I tried not to think about it and pretended the baby was not mine just so I could avoid feeling anything. I thought I had hidden it but Melisson found it. She crafted a dream for me-" the flow stopped and was dammed up for a second before he continued, "a beautiful vision, a paradise I did not want to leave. I was married and had a daughter in this place."

Nyton's right hand went up and pushed away the beginnings of a tear at the corners of his eyes. The left hand was clenching at the edge of Nimura's bed now. "It was not a perfect galaxy with no war or conflict for me to fight in. I was simply happy. My 'wife' was very similar in action to whom I had been with and we had a little girl just like she wanted. It was as though Melisson had reached in, set the stage, and let me play out what I wanted most."

The tears had not decided to quit and he was wiping with more than just a finger now. "I forced myself to choose reality over the dream. Even though I know it was just a dream my thoughts keep going back to it, replacing the actors with who they represented. Now I find myself not only mourning our dead crew but a woman I loved and a child we almost had."

"All of this on top of the realization that I can no longer live as closed off as I have before is staggering me." Nyton confessed. Just then a reminder went off in his memory recorder. It alerted him that his body was in low energy mode due to becoming tired. The reduced energy levels also meant that the various dull pains in his body were no longer masked. "Oh and I am still getting used to being a full conversion cyborg."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

@Nao

"Yeah! Faster onee-chan! Faster!" cried Akiko in agreement with Nao. Shizuka obliged and was no longer running but rather flying while she propelled the cart. If anyone had noticed the commotion it did not seem apparent. Hoshi had been considerate enough to put up holographic warning signs for anyone who was about to cross their path. At this pace though it would not take long for them to reach the kitchenette and Shizuka was forced to begin slowing down before careening uncontrollably into a wall.

The loss of Miharu meant they no longer had the full kitchen to use. The kitchenette of Hoshi was smaller and had less to work with. But it would still do nicely. The elder Shimabumi slowed down and brought the cart to a halt complete with a brake screech sound made by Akiko.

"We are here!" Shizuka announced. "Now then let us make for Nao a tasty dish just for her!"

"Tasty dish! Tasty dish!" Akiko repeated while hopping out of the cart. When Akiko landed she twirled herself quickly and activated her holographics to change her outfit's appearance. She went from paneled work uniform to white top, apron, black pants, and chef hat. In typical magical girl manner she cutely posed by standing on one foot and bringing both hands up to her chin. "A magical wish for a tasty dish!"

Shizuka calmly walked over to the kitchen area. She bent down to open a lower cabinet that hid her from sight. At that time she activated her own holographics so that when she stood up with some cooking gear she appeared dressed just like Akiko. "Let us make you a meal that will more than appeal. Say goodbye to those blues and relax with some food."

Akiko rushed over to one of the small tables in the lounge and prepared it for seating while Shizuka started to cook.

@Nyton:

Nimura averted her eyes when it became obvious that Nyton was tearing up, as if the sight of the man's tears was a sacred thing. She kept listening, though.

She left a silence after his words, both to collect her words and allow him to regain his lost composure. Finally, she wanly said: "Taii... you probably should be on your way. I'm not the only soldier deserving of your concern, or you could probably use a break."

Rin gasped, her eyes going wide. "M- Mara?" She hadn't known, and she didn't want to know. Miharu, Ichigo, now Mara.... This wasn't what she wanted to hear, not now. She embraced Hinoto with tears flowing. "No no no no no...."

As Rin quietly sobbed, the last thing Hinoto said stuck out while more memories came back. Mara had saved them. Ichigo had done the same, especially for Nimura. Miharu had also done that, countless times. At least they were heroes (heroines). The engineer sprite sniffled, as she tried to get words out. "They'll be remembered... right? For what they did?"

"And Hinoto, please don't leave like them...."

@Rin:

"The only thing I am leaving behind are the corpses of our enemies," Hinoto grimly promised. "It was my job to be sly, to be clever, to survive so that I could do what Miharu couldn't - what she entrusted me to do - to bring us survivors out to safety, to that supposed better life that was promised to us once all of this was done and over with."

"Miharu wanted us to know that she died as she lived," the snow-haired sprite added, conveying to Rin Mara's parting words. "She was tremendously proud of us and wanted us to be proud of her too. She wanted us to know that she loved us all, so much that she was willing to give everything up for this."

She stroked Rin's hair. "I think she died happy, Rin. No warship is eternal, and Miharu was closing the end of her lifespan. Her only worry before leaving us was that she wouldn't be able to watch over us, that she wouldn't be able to be there for us."

Hinoto reared her head, pulling Rin away enough so that both nekovalkyrja could look into each other's eyes. "So, we won't give her cause to worry about us. We'll be fine. If things are not fine, we'll make them so. It may be hard, it may be painful, but we'll manage. We are the Miharu clan, Miharu Rin: that's what our family does."