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RP: YSS Kaiyō Post-Mission Eight: Worry Worry Worry

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HAMnJAM

The Ham Lord
Inactive Member
YSS Kaiyō II
Monitoring Room
31日 7月 YE 39
1400 Hours


It was a day after the battle of Komorebi and the Teien Neko were in the monitoring room of the Fuji-class gunship. It was full of plush black leather chairs and the XO and Second Officer could plug in to the bridge via the SPINE interface on all of the chairs and seats. Eden was watching over the bridge while Asuka manned sensors. Something told Teien Eden that Hoshi was in her bedroom with another infantry Neko. Whenever she couldn't find Asuka, too, she would slip out of Hoshi's ready room behind the captain's chair on the bridge.

Eden looked to Saki as they settled into their seats, then to Kikyō. She had a lot to say, but only so many words. She sighed out and smiled, realizing she had begun to look pained, perhaps.

Misaki had a resting scowl on her face, she had for some time now, and was blankly looking ahead. Kikyo was quietly standing as infantry watch by the door, and had her own resting silence as she looked ahead at a position of attention.

After a quiet moment, Misaki felt at the end of her sleeves and her rank stripes as if in thought before glancing over to her wife for only a second before back ahead. She gave a quiet sigh, barely audible unless you were listening for it, and leaned back into her chair.

Eden watched her wife fidget and put a hand on Saki's to still it. "You've been getting overly nervous lately, my love. Everything will be okay."

"Is it? It seems I'm the only one who remembers what happened to the original ship, and the absolute hell we went through. I see how she looks at me, and I can tell there is some reason they are keeping me down here at Chui. Something isn't right up the chain." Her voice was tainted in an uncommon malice, as if strained for weeks on end.

"You're going to get promoted, Saki," Eden said into the silence between the three of them. She glanced at Kikyō, not saying what would happen with her. Not yet. Eden looked away from her daughter and towards the ceiling, then to Saki to see her reaction. Eden added, "There is no real reason to think you are being held down. I have to be honest with you, my love. Perhaps I wasn't the best captain to you while I became and was your lover. And then your girlfriend. And then your wife. While I was being those things, I failed to think I could promote you while being all of those things. I thought it in bad taste. Taiyou-chusa knows this. She will not let you be anything but Taii soon enough." Eden covered both of Saki's hands in her own and squeezed gently.

Misaki looked deadpan into Eden's eyes, speaking as if she'd not heard anything, "I want you to tell me what Command thought about the universe incident: the debrief, the overview, and the reason that everyone here has a black mark about them because of it. Last time I checked I was the executive officer, the wife, that watched her beloved die in a near-death scenario and not only have to live with the thoughts that she had watched her die, but the thought that everything that they had to do was now on her shoulders." Her voice was becoming strained.

"I want to know why they thought that even though we lost one of near millions of Plumerias yet came back against the odds, that we were at total fault."

"They didn't tell me what they thought, Misaki. They only asked questions of me. I do not have the answers." Eden told her this as she looked gently with her own golden eyes. She looked into Saki's violet ones and smiled wanly, saying, "I wish I knew the answers to your questions."

"They must have told you something, they must have shown the tells that officers and admirals make. You would be able to tell in the way they speak, the way they move whether they think you are in the right or wrong. What about us made them think that we were unfit for our positions? What made them think that we were inferior when we defied all the odds to bring everyone home?"

Eden didn't know these questions were going to come and was a little bit downtrodden in her speech when she replied, not at all happy to have to go over this.

"What we did is on par with technology that the Empire wants to keep discreet and private. We are not part of a task force meant to go out and use TTDs but we did what TTDs do. And that's worrisome to some people, myself included. What did we manage to accomplish out there to get back, Misaki? I don't remember. I don't know. I was there in body and mind, but not in this current iteration of my soul, Misaki. These questions hurt to have to answer."

"We took apart their Kaiyo, their equipment, to turn our own aether array into a makeshift TTD. In the chaos, you died while trying to get the last peice out of their ship. We were wholly prepared to watch people die permanently, as we did not know if we could revive anyone once we ripped ourselves back out of the universe. Once we installed the part and fired it off, we rended everything apart and came back in the wreck you saw but didn't experience."

Kikyo seemed to fidget, recounting what happened in as vivid detail as her mother. Misaki continue without taking breath, "We came back, we built a TTD drive we probably wouldn't be able to build again, and we came home. In the aftermath, after watching and waiting in the dying power to see if you would appear in the medbay, you didn't. Kikyo went and watched at the foot of the tubes for hours, I waited to see if we could get any sort of signal. We thought ourselves to be over, and we were all broken and battered. The changes hit some people harder than others, and to me I still feel like this is their way of punishing me, to punish me for being the forsaken one to have to ride through everything I had to on my personal trip through hell!"

At this point, Misaki pulled both of her hands away from Eden's to cover her now tearful eyes, curling up in her seat and heaving to try and keep herself from completely falling apart. She sounded like she hadn't let anything lose for weeks, months even. How long had she been sitting on all of this emotion?

Eden moved to sit closer to Misaki on the loveseat they were on and brought her arms around her wife. She looked to Kikyo and waved her hand, mentally chiming into her daughter's mind to come close and hug them all.

Kikyo, teary eyed from recounting her own memories, didn't walk over. She ran. She didn't have either of her mother's stoicity, and was audibly bawling. Misaki was beginning to fall apart at the seams, her breaths loud and unstable. After failing twice, she just broke down into a painful sounding cry.

Eden cooed and started to rock Misaki and Kikyo gently back and forth.

"It's okay Little One, It's okay Saki, my sweet." Eden patted Saki on the shoulder and kissed her tear-stained cheek.

Kikyo began to fall quiet, though Misaki was still on her strands. She was able to telepathically send to Eden through the feelings of sadness, anger, and growing depression a couple of words, "Why have I been replaced?"

"There is no reason to feel this need to have a certain standing in the hierarchy, my sweet. Just because you no longer hold a position there is no need to cry over it. Are you serving the Empire to your fullest by doing so, Saki?" Eden asked.

Misaki seemed to fidget, giving a whine of discontent before she seemed to lighten off a bit from her cries, though it wasn't the end. "Ever still, were we not the 'mothers' of the Kaiyo?"

Eden frowned and looked a little throughtful for a moment before she said, "No, Taisho Yui and Empress Himiko are the true mothers of the ships we inhabit. We were something different...Eeto..." Eden trailed off.

Kikyo stood up, drying her eyes with her sleeve before giving a quick smile and walking out. She sent a quick telepathic message of, "I need a minute..." as the doors closed behind her. Misaki was growing quieter, though was still taking audible sucks of breath and sniffles.

Once Kikyō was gone, Eden said to Saki, "She needs to find a specialty and study that, Saki. You know that, I know that, half the ship knows that."

Misaki nodded but didn't respond beyond that.

"Saki..." Eden said. "There's more than that. Should I go on?"

She hesitated but nodded again.

"There are rumors of... Eeto... A sexual nature about Kikyō-musume." Eden replied slowly, "That she has been sleeping with people, my wife."

She stirred, meeting Eden's eyes with obvious concern. She didn't say anything but wanted to make sure that was it.

"I want to be sure we're both on the same page about this, Saki. That we're both of the same mind. How do you feel?" Eden asked.

"I don't know. I know she's grown up around everyone, but I don't know." She was suddenly turning more and more confused, wondering if this was becoming a bad situation.

"Mmm, alright," Eden said tersely. She wrapped her arms around Saki and cuddled into her. She brushed her lips against Saki's ear and then moved back towards it. She nibbled on the furry top of it for a moment before releasing it and she kissed the side of Saki's brunette head. "You've watched me die too many times. Now they want me to be a commander of a SOFT team, Misaki."

The former XO's eyes dodged Eden's, the obvious thoughts and worries soon clouding her mind. She scooted into Eden's lap a little more and didn't say anything, letting her movements speak for her. Eden pulled her closer and rested her chin on the crown of Saki's head for a moment before looking back towards the door where Kikyō had just left from.

"Do you want to watch a movie while we have a moment to ourselves?" Eden asked Saki.

She nodded, but absolutely refused to move.

Eden shuffled their bodies to face a volumetric screen and chose the award-winning movie of the year, The Kind Heart.
 
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