[Samurai House] I Remember Her, Now

[Doshii Jun]

Foot of Wide House, Samurai House compound, Kyoto — 18 days after Battle of Yamatai, 6 days after Miharu awards ceremony

06:46, Monday

Kôsuka had felt this many times since having her memory deleted.

Nyton's appearance had been problematic. For his sake, her own, and Kotori's, she had refused to hear details of the mission. The elders already had agreed Kôsuka had taken the most prudent course. She was not going to ruin that.

She knew her daughter was safe. Mostly. That was enough.

Still, she sought peace for her questioning mind. Kôsuka had important duties to see to that required a clear mind. Kei was preparing to accept her first assignment, and Yuri finally had stolen away from the compound in the dead of night, likely running to the Kessaku.

Kôsuka understood Yuri's impulse. She was not a Samurai in spirit, only in combat — Yuri was uncaring of the standards, the discipline that made Samurai what they were in the Ketsurui clan. The Kessaku's standards were not any less strict, but were focused in other places that Yuri likely would manage. Or so Kôsuka imagined.

Nonetheless, the defection left the Samurai on edge. Other pupils and journeywomen had started to ask questions. Answers were honest and honestly given, but the prospect was one with which only the individual could wrestle. None of Kôsuka's current class had such inclinations, though some she saw as future Power Armor Pilots. She thought that a superior occupation to becoming shinobi, but it was her opinion.

Kotori remained her greatest stress. Presenting a steely front could save lives.

Even so, her ears were open.

That was how she heard the journeywoman coming up to the edge of the house, quickly falling into a kneeling position.

"Kôsuka-sensei," the black-haired Neko said, voice echoing throughout the house. "You have a guest. She asks to see you."

The Samurai's eyes opened to narrow slits. She had preferred hearing only the falling snow.

"See her to one of the guest rooms," Kôsuka said. "I will be with her shortly."

The Neko did not move. Kôsuka's skin vision along her neck saw the Neko hesitate, looking behind her, then back at Kôsuka.

"I cannot," she said. "Sensei, she is royalty."

"Royalty?" That did not add up. Kôsuka knew she would have been identified. As well, no royalty would have waited in the snow. They would have directly gone to Hanako House. Mentally grumbling, the Samurai got to her feet and spoke as she walked to the edge.

When she looked over the edge, she only saw the shadow of an umbrella — everything else was snow. She trained a sharp look on the journeywoman. "Who?"

The Neko did not look up, but visibly tensed. "K — Ketsurui Kotori-Hime-sama."

" — " Kôsuka snatched up the back of the journeywoman's heavy gi like a kitten's scruff and brought her to her feet. "What manner of joke is this?"

"The serious kind, where I tell a retainer to arrange a meeting with my parent, and that she heeds my wishes," a familiar woman's voice lightly called from behind the journeywoman. "I hardly think my wishes being heeded warrants such poor treatment."

The umbrella-carrying figure had come closer, her passage barely leaving any tracks on the snow. From under the shadow of the loosely-held paper umbrella, Kotori's amber eyes looked at her mother.

Kôsuka's gaze snapped toward the impudent person who tossed about her daughter's name that way — and her breath left her. Her body tensed and her eyes went wide, as she stared back down at the Neko who looked so much like her daughter. No, was her daughter. She could tell. She saw Kotori's soul locked inside those amber stones.

She let go of the Neko with a hand that unnaturally quivered. "Not a soul," she said, still breathless. "Tell not a single soul, living or passed, who is here. Is that clear, journeywoman?"

"Yes, sensei," the Neko hastily bowed. "I will, I mean won't! No one. You have my word!"

"Be on your way," Kôsuka said, feeling stuck. Should she meet her daughter below? No. Kotori should come closer. The mother wanted her daughter out of the cold. More maternal urges pushed at Kôsuka to send for food, tea, a blanket, a bedroll, new clothes. They could come after she hugged the life out of her daughter.

The Neko left by flight. "Come inside, Kotori," she called down.

Kotori stood her ground, resplendant in the kimono dress Sonoda made for her. Kôsuka's invitation had her struggle not to clench her teeth. The daughter saw affection in the mother's invitation, but Kotori herself was not yet ready to let go of her own bitterness.

"Sumimasen, hahaue," Kotori smoothly returned, her fiercely defiant stare bestowing a lack of sincerity to the apology. "I have disobeyed your wish that I only return after becoming Empress."

Kôsuka gently floated down the side of the House, letting the sting of the words sink into her skin and heart. She deserved that rebuke. And others, or so she wagered. Snow began to cling to her black hair by the time she touched down on the ground, meeting Kotori's gaze just a meter away.

"I forgive the transgression," she said. Had she really demanded Kotori be Empress? "I do not remember asking that anyway."

That was your parting shot, and you don't 'remember it'? "How convenient," Kotori said, her eyes half-closing at the remark.

The princess was unsure on how exactly to follow on that, though. "Well, the reason you left was for the most part resolved. You should know that she died, and never did anything that would remotely come close to threatening those oaths of yours."

"Does it matter to you that she died bravely?" Kotori bluntly asked. "Is being pivotal in destroying a dozen warships, facing a power armor unclad and dying by aether after being nearly roasted to death by her own aether saber-rifle good enough for you?"

Kôsuka did not have to check to see who "she" was — she knew she did not know, but Kotori did not know that. "When I returned from your ship, I erased enough of my memory through ST backup to ensure I did not remember critical parts of your mission, Kotori. I don't know who you speak of. ... I assume I did it for your safety."

Kotori's eyes widened. She was stunned, feeling then hot and then suddenly cold, all at once. Maybe a human girl would've fainted. Kotori was made of sterner stuff.

"You forgot," Kotori said in a terrible whisper. "You decided to forget, rather than bear the knowledge of what your daughter had been made into? Did your honor not even have enough room for that?"

The hand holding the umbrella that was staving snowflakes away from Kotori's dress and hair tightened. Her body language changed. She did not move much, but by the lift of her chin, how her body tensed, how her eyes glared, how her ears stiffened; the shift was a predatory one.

"No one gets to impersonate my parent and live," she flatly declared. "My mother would not be so cowardly as to forget about her youngling, even after having intimated she was an abomination. Convince me you are who I came to see, or die."

The Samurai's stance remained soft, pliant. She kept her eyes right on Kotori's, and she kept her arms at her sides.

"I know you died at PNUgen," Kôsuka said in a slow voice. "I know you were brought back by Sylvester-san. I know your NH-22M body survived, but not what became of it. I remember your mission was to kill Eve, after you were given command of the Miharu. That is where my memory stops. From there, I know only what I have seen in public reports and from what your retainer Nyton Claymere told me. He was careful not to reveal anything of your mission, beyond that it expanded into killing a follower of Eve and the NMX general Melisson.

"That I do not remember does make me a coward, Kotori, but I cannot change that now. All I know is that I must have done it to keep you safe."

The thought came unbidden in Kôsuka's mind. What her daughter had been made into ... did something happen with the 22M body? Had there a soul still been inside it? Sylvester-san had not told her any such thing, and she could not fathom him doing that!

"Safe from what?" Kotori darkly retorted. She almost sneered, but wiped that expression from her face. Her glare was enough. "Is it hard for you to keep secrets? To have faith that your daughter — your princess! — would not disappoint you despite some potential conflict involved with the oath you swore to Yui?" The way Kotori named the Ketsurui clan mistress hinted at a certain lack of deference.

"The only thing I needed you to keep me safe from was the urge to tattle-tale to others," she shook her head. "...and you tell me that to do that you wiped your memory of those events? To 'keep me safe'?"

Kotori's eyes narrowed nearly to amber slits. "That would have been done more effectively by staying, and fighting by my crew rather than storming out."

I stormed out? Why? The snow was starting to fall harder, and the wind was picking up just a bit, sending a flurry or two around the grounds in front of the House.

"There must have been good reasons for me to do the things I did, Kotori. Kessaku agents came at me after I completed the memory wipe, attempting to take me prisoner and bring me to Irim." The Samurai did not see an advantage in repeating the loyalty she had to uphold, or her ability to keep her mouth shut. Erasing memory was the only surefire way to avoid divulging information.

Kotori's brow furrowed, dismay winning over indignation. Errant snowflakes stuck to her skirts, and she did not care.

"It is not fair that you forgot about her," she quietly lamented. It did not look like she needed much more convincing about who Kôsuka was.

Kôsuka held her feet where they were, ignoring the bitter cold and the wet forming on her head and around her exposed neck. "I ... I know. I am ashamed of it, Kotori. I think I have grieved for her without knowing it was grief. My actions might have been safe, but they still were cowardly. I can only beg for forgiveness."

"Forgiveness," Kotori repeated. Then she scowled. "I can do better than that. I can share the burden you shrugged off, whoever's sake it was for."

A pause, and then: "Karl Sylvester secreted the NH-22M body away and uprated her to as close an approximation he could make of a NH-23. He secreted her on my ship, her body mostly in stasis, but her mind communing with the ship's MEGAMI."

Kotori watched Kôsuka, waiting for the transformation the understanding the words would cause for her. Chill wind whipped at her dress, her hair, but her amber eyes burned with defiance, daring Kôsuka to react as she had back then.

What little color was in Kôsuka's face left.

An NH-23 was an Empress' body. Yui's body, and perhaps a few select others among the royalty. Sylvester ... he had committed treason on an unimaginable scale, and committed her daughter to it.

Her daughter, put in that position! Put at such risk!

It was unforgivable. It had to be! To have an NH-23 outside of the clan's control, allowed to be free, to threaten the very Mistress of the Star Army! Kôsuka's fists balled. What had Sylvester been thinking? What reason could possibly exist to have caused him to do such a thing?

It did not matter that her daughter's soul was inside the body. In fact, it made it worse. Kotori had to die at that point. Her daughter ... her original daughter. Her first daughter.

Her eyes teared. Her other daughter lived. Her real daughter. Right? It was all so confusing. A sin that never was supposed to be committed, giving the same soul two lives at the same time, was put upon her daughter.

She clenched her teeth. Sylvester. That ... that bastard. She stopped herself before she took joy in his death.

Reason, Kôsuka thought. Reason! Use your mind!

"Why," she bit out.

"It was something about his family being threatened," Kotori answered, wiser in that matter since she had absorbed the cloud consciousness of her NH-23 original. "Eve's lieutenant Amaya had found him since he had ties with you and me, whom were close to a Ketsurui princess. He was supposed to change the people likely to meet Melisson — Hanako or someone of her entourage — into a neko body boasting defenses able to destroy her. What I became.

"He was being blackmailed, with no sign of when they'd let him go. Uprating my 'elder sister' was his way of getting back at them, and giving my crew a fighting chance against them. It was desperate, and he regretted it, but he fought with the weapons he had at his disposal."

" ... " Committing an act of treason to stop the eventual assassination of the royalty. One wrong to stop another.

She understood now. All of it made sense. He had to give Kotori something that could stop Eve and her damned cohorts, something that could kill them for good. It was public knowledge that Eve had been "a very powerful foe;" inside the clan it was an open secret that she was at least NH-17T, if not something more threatening.

Killing Melisson, in Kôsuka's mind, was just a step. Eve didn't care about Melisson beyond removing her as an obstacle along her path to destroying her sister, Yui.

Storming out made sense too. Hearing such a thing made her want to call Sylvester a coward before gutting him for betraying the clan, but that was an undisciplined urge made amidst rage and sorrow. But knowing that such a thing existed —

She was duty bound to inform the Mistress. To tell her what was going on. Stop the mission, stop Kotori from killing Eve. Stop it all. Such an immense threat to the Mistress ... perhaps a greater threat than even Eve.

Now Kôsuka understood. Erasing her memory had been the most reasoned compromise available at the time. Keeping the knowledge away from everyone guaranteed Kotori's mission could continue, without her breaking her oaths to the clan.

Yet ... I could have done as she said, Kôsuka thought. I could've stayed, and trusted my daughter and Sylvester-san. I could have helped.

I could have saved my daughter's life.

The Samurai hung her head, her teeth clenched so tight she wondered if they might break. She knew that, at the time, she had made the best decision possible, but hindsight brought nothing but hurt and anguish.

"Kotori ... " Kôsuka's telepathy, in Yamataian, was red and throbbing. "I am so sorry."

Kotori repressed the urge to show disdain. That was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. "Once you discovered what she had been turned into, you turned on my crew and tried to kill them," the princess told the samurai, her tone frosty enough to compete with the cold. "It took my ship's AI creating forcefields to stop you from going into a full-fledged rampage.

"When we talked it over, you seemed willing to make the most of a bad situation... but I could not let the fact slide that you tried to kill members of my crew. They had no reason to trust you from that point on, and I did not want them alienated to you. I tried to ask you for your word that you would not try to harm them again, and you would not give it.

"I suppose you feeling you'd go over one promise to honor another made to your daughter was too much to ask. We argued, and finally you left."

Kotori snorted in wry amusement, despite the grim situation. "She died thinking that you rejected her. That you saw her as a monster. That the more she wanted to stay alive, the more a burden she became. In the end, though, she never became the threat you feared she could be.

"I did."

Kôsuka could make it up in her mind, see it happening as Kotori spoke it. Confronted with such an obvious threat to the Mistress, preparing to fight in order to stop the threat, but calming once it was explained. It felt like a young Samurai's mistake, but at the same time justified within the bounds of the clan's oath.

She had let her love of her daughter lead to the compromise. Blaming the crew and her daughter was not important; they knew what they had to do, while Kôsuka only knew of her oaths, which had to come above all, or what was her word and loyalty worth?

The Samurai imagined her daughter, in battle and injured, thinking that her own mother thought her a disfigurement of royalty, a perversion of the natural order of the clan.

What Kotori meant by her becoming the true "threat" she did not understand, and had no rationality left to ponder it. She wept. Heart-wrenching wails hardly above talking volume, paired with steamy rivers down her cheeks from clenched eyelids, before they were covered by her hands. Samurai training to not show such emotion did not stop them.

Kotori did not turn away from Kôsuka's weeping, even though there was something that felt sacred about it. In a way, she had sought her mother's tears, but she was not elated by them.

As Kotori saw it, Kôsuka's first youngling deserved to be remembered this way, to be mourned this way. On the other side of that coin, it was also Kôsuka's right as a mother to be able to cry for her lost child. A right that, for better or for ill, Kotori had returned to her.

The Ketsurui princess had more to say, but that could wait. She would not kick her mother while she was down.

Kotori closed the last of the distance between mother and daughter, sharing her umbrella with Kôsuka. "Come, Mother. Let us get you someplace warmer," she said as she took gentle hold of the samurai's arm to coax her away.

* * *

From the moment Kotori ushered Kôsuka back into the apartment and closed the door behind them, it was like she had never left. That was a false impression, of course. In the past, Kôsuka's daughter had been willful, but not to the point of taking charge like this.

Right after closing her umbrella and setting it by the door, Kotori led Kôsuka — wet, cold robes and all — to the kotatsu at the exact same spot she had sat with Nyton, flipped the blankets up, bent down and turned the heater on; before finally ordering the samurai in her no-nonsense 'I am a princess and you will do as I say' fashion to hunker there and warm herself up.

Kotori herself scurried off to make tea. Some samurai turned tea brewing into an art form, and those that respected the craft could offer their guests sublime drinks. Unfortunately, Kôsuka's daughter took more after their common mentor Chizuru Saya and brewed tea for the sake of having something warm to drink. Hence, it typically also tasted accordingly: pretty average.

Kotori finally returned with two steaming cups of tea, settled one before Kôsuka and then settled herself opposite to her mother. The daughter sat, watched, and waited.

Kôsuka could only feel the hurt inside her soul because of what she had done. Heat was a low priority. She forlornly stared at the table in front of her, the steaming cup of tea untouched. The snow still was falling hard; it was quite a blizzard.

Minutes passed before Kôsuka spoke. "I don't know where to go from here."

She kept her hands under the blanket, willfully repressing the urge to sniff. "I let one of my daughters die."

That gave Kotori an opening to what she wanted to address next. "What does it take to permanently kill a NH-23? Do you know? Because if she was, then she ought to have been able to come back to life."

Kôsuka's expression made clear she had no idea. She assumed the NH-23 was just harder to kill than the NH-27 — it was the Empress model, after all. "I do not know."

A sigh escaped Kotori's lips. "Then, it looks like I have stories to tell."

"You see, when PNUgen stopped being the principal manufacturer of the Nekovalkyrja race and that the role was handed down to the Ketsurui Zaibatsu... one of KZ's first projects was the NH-23," Kotori explained. "The NH-23 is powerful — a lot of it is souped up NH-22M capabilities — but its principal asset is its administrative connection to PANTHEON.

"That is to say, a NH-23 nekovalkyrja's body is only the anchor of the nekovalkyrja's mind. The cloud consciousness, as Yui calls it, can spread both its presence and perception to all the PANTHEON nodes it can access. In the event of her body being compromised, it is no big deal: her mind just accesses a medlab's facilities and she respawns herself with a newly created NH-23 body.

"Almost everything in the Empire runs on PANTHEON, so the whole horror over the danger a competing NH-23 with PANTHEON access is understandable. As for your NH-23 daughter, her digital roots weren't widely spread: she was only in Miharu's computers, she protected us from hacking, helped us in our hacking attempts and also fiddled around with the creation of ship sprites — it was the closest she'd ever get to have daughters of her own."

In sum: her daughter had not been a threat to anyone. Not to Yui. Not to the clan. No one. She had protected her crew, kept her presence to a minimum, even "gave birth" in a fashion with the creation of new Nekovalkyrja. Much like Yui helped do, if indirectly, by being one of the first of a long line of Neko.

And to be confronted with knowing how ... pointless her position as Stealth Sentinel had been. Her reasonable mind came back from that idea to refute it: she still needed protection, still needed to avoid the pain of dying, of being captured at the very least. Such a powerful body in the wrong hands ...

More energy seemed to leave Kôsuka's body.

"So I was all the more the fool."

"We were all played for fools in different ways, hahaue," Kotori returned, thinking of Melisson's meddling.

"Regardless, there is an anomaly in how your first daughter died. A NH-23 should have had been able to respawn in Miharu's medlab. Or Hoshi's, the attached auxiliary ship," Kotori pointed out. "That was not the case. She was thwarted somehow."

"She was not the exception," Kotori added. "Miharu's mission involved contact with two other NH-23s. The second we encountered was Eve herself, whom had been given by Shinichiro a body that could rival Yui's. The third we met was the clone Yui created of herself to command the lost Second Draconian Fleet."

"All died," the princess precised. "The NH-23 Kotori died first so she had no part in the demise of the others. So it was no exception. Something was there, able to destroy them. That something would also potentially be able to destroy Yui-sama, yes?"

Kôsuka seemed to sum up her weary frame at the words "destroy Yui-sama," sitting up a bit more and trying to regain some of her obliterated composure. "Yes. I follow that concept." She did not understand the technology, but Kotori made it seem like that was a secondary concern.

Her daughter nodded and continued: "Now, consider the power a NH-23 holds over Yamataian society via her possible influence over PANTHEON. If you were in Shinichiro-Hakase's shoes, do you think you would have been comfortable with your first creation somehow setting herself up to be akin to a god, an entity similar to the AvaNet avatars of old?"

"No," Kotori then answered, smirking slightly. "Of course not. Human creators have their egos and attitudes over runaway creations. So, he went to work and designed something to police the NH-23, to contain it, to assimilate it so that all that sweeping control — the sheer amount of information behind it — would not be lost.

"It involved caveats. To resist PANTHEON takeover, the copy protections had to be extremely powerful. There'd be no way for him to put his mind into that body, and then transfer it out at some later time. I assume he just gave up on it from there, since he could not truly beneficiate from it."

Kotori knew Kôsuka had enough puzzle pieces to draw viable conclusions by now, but she kept going anyways so to leave no doubt. "When Eve's underling Amaya was looking for a psionic weapon to rival Melisson, Shinichiro thought of his experimental creation made to confront a NH-23 and likely figured that the powerful suite or psionic defenses he had designed could suit Eve's needs."

"So, he added limiters to his designs and gave the template away for the Daughters of Eve to use." Kotori reached out to her own cup of tea, craddled it in her hands and held it aloft. Letting the heat that seeped out warm her fingers she continued with: "The first use was with the NH-28 NIWS, but it didn't have the 'living' mind to make the 'Psionic Signal Reversal' feature work."

"Sooo, they turned to one of the people whom had worked on the NH-29, Sylvester-san." Kotori was getting to the crux of her story. "They told him 'You! You helped make the NH-29. Make these features work on it, or else!'. Poor Sylvester-san obeyed, but he resented his new taskmasters and looked at the template in more details, finding where Shinichiro had placed limiters."

"When the person that needed to be serviced with a new body ended up being Kotori, perhaps Sylvester-san thought it was worth it to remove as many of the limiters as possible. Perhaps he would trust that darling little Kotori-chan would make something good out of it," the princess gave a shrug. "Or perhaps he was simply too talented for his own good."

"I was created from such wishful thinking." Kotori's voice grew bittersweet. "Of course, the first time Shinichiro's anti-NH-23 features kicked in, it was when the NH-23 Kotori died within my range. Her small cloud consciousness was caught, drawn to me rather than nesting with Miharu's computer, and I effectively devoured her mind, making her memories my own."

More slowly, she added: "The same happened with Eve when her body expired. And the same to Yui's clone. They're all part of me now."

The smile she gave her mother then was cheerless. "So, you see, Mother... I'm the pawn that was allowed to reach the other end of the chessboard... and now I turned into a queen. All along, you should have sided with your first daughter, and instead worried about me."

Kotori, Shinichiro's Monster — that's what Melisson had called her.

With all of the information now in her grasp, Kôsuka's reply was to stare.

She stared through Kotori rather than at her. In front of her was someone ... someone who could kill the Mistress just by being near her at the right moment. Kill her forever.

Why didn't that hit her harder? Why did she feel stunned instead? Kôsuka wasn't sure ... she brought a hand to her head, the knowledge too heavy to keep her neck straight. The true assassin against her clan mistress was her daughter sitting before her, in reach.

And she did not react as her oaths demanded.

Only one thought came to her.

"Is she ... in you? Are you one? Can I tell her I am sorry?"

 

[Doshii Jun]

Kotori's expression softened. "I remember most of everything she lived through — I would not speak so intimately about what she experienced, the misery she felt, was it not so. The knowledge is compressed, but it's all my own. But... personality was not an element that was retained."

She paused. Hesitated. Then told her mother: "Your tears are enough. That you acknowledge her existence and see that she rose up to your best expectations is enough."

"Sou," Kôsuka lamely said. That was it, then. Sylvester and his family, her original Kotori. Dead. Gone. Not to be seen ever again, anywhere, except in memories. Memories of Kotori that she did not have ... memories of her daughter at her best.

She looked at Kotori — her daughter. There was so much to be proud of there, though ... she was the savior of the Empire. Body be damned.

Body be damned!

Her daughter was a hero! She was all she could have asked for. Kôsuka could not reject her. She already had lost one daughter over a mere body type, a choice not even made by Kotori herself. She would not lose her daughter again for the same reason. She could not.

"I can never set the past right," the Samurai said. "But, I can not repeat past mistakes. And I will strive to do the most good. That is the Way of Honor."

She looked at Kotori with a drained, but somehow accepting ... and loving, expression.

"I love you, daughter. That must be what matters most."

"Really?" Kotori asked wanly. She took a sip from her tea cup, not really tasting the warm liquid passing her lips, and looked into her distorted reflection herein. "Because there is a fundamental difference between your daughter and the clone that sits before you."

"I want to kill Yui," she announced. "It's the reason I came to see you. To be with you, one last time, before I tried."

" ... " From one extreme to a kind of emptiness she could not face. Kôsuka had no response to that. Her daughter ... wanted to kill Yui? She wanted that?

"You are my daughter," Kôsuka repeated. She had to repeat it, to know it was true. "You are. Inside and outside, you are my Kotori."

"About as much as you are Kôsuka," Kotori looked up from her cup. "After all, Kotori's mother was a NH-22M nekovalkyrja. You're her NH-27 copy. And I am the Nekovalkyrja Signaler copy of your daughter."

All of the talk of technology, what had happened to the NH-23 Kotori, made Kôsuka start to question just how true Kotori's point was. She started to hold her head again.

"You have her memories, and your own memories, just as I have all the memories from my NH-22M body. It is not the body that matters! It is the soul! I know my daughter's soul!"

She shouted, angry now, and tried to make sense of it all.

"Then know this!" Kotori's reply was sharp, but her voice was more even. She set her cup back on the table and glared up at Kôsuka. "When Ketsurui Yui and I met over Nataria, which the Second Draconian Fleet reconquered at my behest, I saw her plan a gamble that would take advantage of the NMX misreading our fleet movements."

"Yui," this time Kotori did not hold back her disdain, though the single-syllable name made it hard to place much vitriol in it. "Yui decided to hide the central defense fleet — all two-thousand of its warships — in order to fool the NMX into attacking the homeworld. The NMX came, smashed through Hoshi no Iori's defenses unopposed, and then the Mishhuvurthyar were allowed to lay waste to our world."

"Eventually, Yui's other fleet came to oppose them. So did mine. Only then did the central defense fleet deign to emerge from hiding to result in what Yui wanted. A dazzling military victory against the Neo Mishhuvurthyar.

"A victory that was bought with more than two-and-a-half-million civilian dead!" Kotori snarled out. "Us soldiers and samurai, we have been prepared to face death in battle, to ride forth and stop the enemy in defense of our homes. But Yui's gamble trusted that responsability on those whom it was not their burden to hold, turning them into victims; a macabre sacrifice to give her an oh-so-glorious victory."

"The Central Defense Fleet was outnumbered more than two-to-one against, but Miharu faced worse odds than that and we prevailed," Kotori vehemently continued. "It should have been possible for them to hold the enemy's four-thousands long enough for reinforcements to arrive! We still would've won, Yamatai would've been protected, and the death toll would have been only carried by soldiers... and been far smaller at that."

Kotori held her head high, her soul in her eyes... and it was furious. Indignant. Outraged.

"I am nekovalkyrja," she asserted. "Our race was made to defend humanity. Our soldiers trained to protect our Empire and all of those whom hold it dear. What Yui did, what she put first, is wrong. Unacceptable. Criminal, even! I did not lose Miharu and half my crew to return here and witness such an unforgivable display."

"My naivete is to blame," she admitted. "I had good intentions in liberating Nataria, but that was also the catalyst that gave fertile ground to the seed of Yui's gamble to flower from. I know part of the blame is mine to bear, I know!"

"But Yui, who will make her account for her actions? Who can punish her? Who can stop her?" Kotori gestured to herself. "I see her spread wide over PANTHEON, dominating our society, being tantamount to being an unstoppable Yamataian 'Goddess of Death'. Overtime, she becomes more like a cloud of data and less like a neko. Less humane, more like how AvaNet was once for us."

"...and I'm the only one that can stop it from getting worse," Kotori grimly concluded.

Kôsuka let the words hang before spoke.

"So. Pride stung, flush with power and angry as a Berserker, you propose summary judgment and assassination. Hm."

Kotori felt something strike her, but knew Kôsuka had not moved. Anti-gravity manipulation in the form of a slap, the kind a mother would give to an impetulant child, was the culprit. The princess froze in the position the recoil set her, only glaring back from the corner of one eye as the samurai began to lecture her.

"Truly you are my daughter, scars and all. All you suffered, all you gained, and your push is for death? More death? Have not enough people died from the mistakes of the powerful?"

Kôsuka's expression turned into a glare. "Your selfishness comes from many places, but it does not come from your mind. Use your reason, youngling. Yui dies. Then what? Himiko does not replace her, nor does Yuumi. The one solid standard-bearer Yamatai has drops the flag and the morale of the people drops with it. Do you wish to take her place? Assume Yamatai's pre-eminent clan for yourself, along with its military?

"You are not such a fool. Yui gambled. It was a risk. She knew what was at stake. Do you claim to know her feelings? I think not.

"If you want to affect change, start by acting like a princess instead of a would-be murderer, no better than a gangster on Nepleslia, killing to ascend and fix what is 'wrong.' "

That last bit had Kotori raise her head, chastised, but not cowed.

"Diminishing my intentions to that level does not even begin to account for my earnestness, or the wrong that was allowed to happen, or the people that died because of it," Kotori returned straightfaced, her resentment held in check.

Kotori did not get more angry simply because Kôsuka was actually repeating thoughts she herself had back when she had visited Rosenthal's. Still...

"I was there when Yui announced her gamble. I saw her callous eagerness at the plan for myself, hahaue," she added, her voice growing calmer still. "I was also at Port Xenn, standing over the calcinated remains of the Sylvester family's summerhouse. Margaret, Gillian and Timothy's lives were lost to Yui's gamble... and you are calling me the fool?"

The Sylvester family being victims of the Battle of Yamatai was a personal loss, but the Sylvester family had also symbolized to Kotori most of what had been good in Yamataian society and family. Kotori knew that regardless of thier mutual feelings for Karl Sylvester's controversial actions that on some level it was also the same for Kôsuka.

"Yes, and I will do so until you grasp the truth of it," Kôsuka said back, girding her words in steel. "Yui is not you. She does not agonize over every death. She agonizes over all deaths. And if she does it in a way that does not suit you, that gives you justification for murder?

"This is not the path. There is no honor in this, no righteousness or justice or even balance. It continues the killing. I don't diminish your intentions and plan, because they are no more than that. You think Sylvester would want this? Your crew? Any of the dead who now are mourned?"

Kôsuka straightened too. "I know my daughter better than this. And her loved ones."

"You speak of change. You speak of being a princess. You also speak in riddles," Kotori cooly pointed out. "Should I just let go of this? Pretend it was alright for Yui to impose such risk on the people she should have protected rather than making the crews of two-thousand warships impotently twiddle thier thumbs while the NMX rained death on Yamatai?"

"A princess does not just 'let go,' " Kôsuka evenly replied. "Pursue change from inside. Cultivate influence. Become a source of inspiration for the people, one who interacts with them and confidently curries their favor. You already are a war hero. You could be more. Without needless bloodshed of your fellow Nekovalkyrja and our creators."

Kotori returned a sullen look. "So, even after all of this, you're still holding to the perspective of an oath-bound Ketsurui Samurai, sworn to Yui? Is it that I hear speaking, or the woman that was ready to wipe her memory to defy her oath? Because right now, it's very hard to tell for me. To you, all Yui did is just 'take a risk'? Not instigate some awful war crime that no one else in our society appart from me is noticing?"

"How many ships returned from the Second Draconian fleet, Kotori? I know there were more than a few thousand. Did you make the decision to not bring them all back? Did you try to?

"Don't answer. I know you tried. I believe Yui did the same. She is not perfect or invincible or a deity. She made a judgment. A bad one in hindsight. You could ensure she does not make that kind of judgment in the future with your influence and insight. Instead, you wish to plunge the Empire into chaos by killing its strongest general, and the firstborn to an entire people? I do not need to be a Samurai or an oathbreaker to see your plan is not the way!"

Kotori knew Kôsuka had already won the argument, though the admission made the bottom of her belly feel like an ashy pit. She knew that it was unlikely she'd truly win against Yui if it ever came to a confrontation.

Even if she did win against Yui, there was no guarantee she would either kill her for good considering hidden backups, and the only way she could pursue those like had had Eve would be to survive the battle and Yui's vengeful followers.

Such thoughts also followed the assumption Kotori's brain would survive assimilating a presence much more massive than the three others she had already. Would she internalize it alright? Would her brain survive? Would her personality remain whole?

Despite her acknowledging that, she challenged Kôsuka's point of view. "Is Yui so important that should she fall for good that it would condemn the Empire to chaos? I do not think we are so hapless. Arguably killing Yui once the war against the Neo Mishhuvurthyar would be better timing, but the Empire would work itself out."

"And how many would die in the process? Clan warfare, municipalities turning on each other? Prefectures could see an opportunity to leverage something for their own gain, at a time when the Empire should stand as one clan, one unit, a force for good and honor! What example would it set for one of our own to kill another? Has not enough of that been done in this war?

"Yui is a linchpin," Kôsuka said. "She alone is not the thing that holds the Empire up, but in many ways she is what holds us together. For good and bad. Others try to balance her more extreme actions. You could be one of them if your pain is so great."

"My pain?" Kotori shook her head in dismay. "It isn't just that. I led my crew on a mission that was meant to protect thier homes from terrible ills. I asked them to give me everything they had, and lead them straight into hell, and half of them litterally did give me thier everything. When we come back, supposedly victorious, we find out that our actions unwittingly became the catalyst for a chain of events that scarred the homeworld we tried so hard to protect with ruins."

"For Miharu. For everything that symbolism alone meant. For everything that should have been set right by so much sacrifice!" Kotori angrily blinked away tears. "You call it selfish, but I call it the closest expression of what I nobility I have, You call it murder, and I see it as a fight to 'save the Empire' I might have had prematurely ended."

"Of course I thought it was extreme. Of course I don't consider it safe. I'm not even sure if my brain could survive killing another NH-23, or survive her angry followers, or even net a decisive victory considering any hidden ST backups Yui might have. Even worse, I seem to be the only one so far whom finds what Yui did wrong — that speaks well of my sanity, doesn't it?

"But I'm the only one that could do it, out of anyone. I'm the only one with the dilemma of whether it should be done or not. The only one that could really ask the question to herself: 'is Yui too far gone?' Considering all the things Yui has done in the past, all the muck she plunged her hands into, don't tell me it wasn't worth considering!"

"It is worth considering change!" Kôsuka bellowed. "NOT more killing! When there is war, there is death! Senseless, merciless death! Visited on all in each corner of the universe. Have you asked your compatriots if they believe your course of action will make those deaths right? Or did you not bring them into the discussion. That would have been nobility acting like nobility, asking them for their beliefs first. Your fight now is not to save the Empire by healing its wounds, but by rending it apart and waiting for it to grow into some mutated facet of your wounded mind's eye!"

Kôsuka folded her arms in front of herself. "No. That is not my daughter. I raised her better than that."

Kotori had nothing to reply to that; her supply of retorts seemed be to exhausted. It wasn't much, but for the time you had... maybe you did, was what Kotori was thinking as she self-consciously lifted one hand to flick back some black hair that had spilled forward during the argument.

When she finally spoke, it was: "So, after learning about 'everything'... what will you do now?"

Kôsuka paused, then leaned forward. She took her tea cup in both hands and took a long sip. The tea was a little bitter; Kotori had let it steep longer than it should have. Just how Kôsuka took it.

She then shrugged out of her blanket and stood, walking to the closet just to the right of her hideaway bed. She removed a wrapped length of something, then weighed it in her arms and in her eyes. She turned, sat down again and put it in the middle of the table.

"This is yours," she said.

Before Kotori's eyes was the sheathed wakizashi Nyton had brought Kôsuka days before, Shitoyaka no Kanpeki.

The princess respectfully took hold of the weapon and raised it aloft to examine it in detail. Her amber eyes covered the golden petals of the tsuba, the blood red wrapping of the scabbard, and her arms appreciated the weight of the yamataium-made scabbard.

The hand closest to the hilt shifted there, grasped and Kotori slid the sword out of its scabbard, its distinctive Yui-blue blade glittering before her eyes. Etched kanji near the tsuba named the blade.

"The Divine Arrows," Kotori uttered in recognition. She let out a weary sigh and rehomed the blade without blooding it.

She set it on the table and looked back to her mother.

"I want you to keep this wakizashi, hahaue," Kotori told Kôsuka. "It is an honor your firstborn has deserved far more than I. It is your keepsake now."

"I have but one daughter," Kôsuka said, not reaching for the weapon. "And it is hers. Whether she lives up to its declaration is for her to decide."

"Then she leaves it for display in her mother's apartment, to be remembered by with," Kotori replied.

To be extended such a symbol of regard ... Kotori felt it was foolish. She had ordered the Divine Arrows to their deaths. Not only was she perfectly fine with the transparent blades that were already hers, humbly unnamed as they were, but she didn't care to carry around a reminder of the Battle of Yamatai.

"I have enough memories of my daughter this night," she replied, "to last a lifetime."

"One obstinate nekovalkyrja is enough for this room," Kotori tried not to snap, but this was obviously something she didn't care to argue over. "Just say you'll treasure it always and be happy about it."

"Give it to someone who lives up to its name as much as you do," she said, just as hardheaded as her daughter. "My blades are my own. I have no use for another's weapon, when I did nothing to earn it.

"The commander of the Divine Arrows herself awarded these weapons to the Miharu crew. It was her desire, and those of her unit, to see their sacrifice honored in this way. Think of that, and not of your supposed errors, when you carry it."

Kotori glowered back.

Grace under pressure, dammit.

"It'd make a great wall hanger, you know?" She wearily tried to joke about yet again another standoff. "Or a credible paperweight. It's a bit too sharp to serve as a butterknife, though."

Kôsuka didn't glare as much as she stared. In that way that Kotori knew well, considering how often she employed it.

That only reinforced Kotori's resolved toward the weapon, though. All she had to do was say 'no'.

"Keep it," Kotori repeated, more deliberately. "Do it for me, because as I am I lack what is necessary to appreciate such a blade. I am not touched by the gift. I do not want it. I do not even have a use for it. You, at least, would pay it mind with more honor. You, at least, could take the burden I can't."

" ... " Kôsuka narrowed her eyes, then let out a slow breath. "On one condition."

The Samurai had not put the blankets back over herself, so she was free to slowly draw her own wakizashi and put it on the table. It was transparent — a Stealth Sentinel's weapon.

"Trade."

Kotori wordlessly grasped Shitoyaka no Kanpeki's scabbard and put it behind her.

"That's not very sporting," Kôsuka said, with a smile, and made a slight cut to her finger with her own weapon before putting it back in its sheath.

"I will keep it," she said, patting the tabletop. "But I expect you to come for it when you need it. Don't be shy."

Kotori replaced the Yui Scout Ceremonial Blade back on the table and asked: "Was it Nyton whom came to you, and gave you the awards I would have had earned at the ceremony?"

"Yes." Kôsuka nodded, leaving the blade where it was. "He seemed lost. He missed you."

"I miss him as well." Kotori did not hide her regret. "I have no one less to share complicity with, or to give subtle hints about how I feel when I show masks to others, or to giddily pose to when I try on new dresses."

Kotori fingered the red collar of her dress. "But the fantasy of the nekovalkyrja bride that could raise a family is long over. He wanted something I could not give him. It's in our best interests to move on in our lives separately."

"Strange," Kôsuka replied. "Your engineer friend, Tom Freeman, and your executive officer are to marry. They seem to be willing to try."

"I am not them, and they are not me," Kotori looked up from the collar and back into Kôsuka's eyes. "If Yukari can find happiness this way, more power to her. I do not believe in it anymore."

The sadness in Kôsuka's eyes was unmistakable, but she did not pry. She had only the Samurai and her pupils. "You will find your own happiness someday as well, my youngling."

Kotori gave a mirthless chuckle. "Provided I get there."

She then leaned back, putting her arms behind her to support her as she tilted her head back enough to look back at the door, peering at the blizzard outside. "Everytime I've had a brush with death — either roasted by a phosphorus grenade under the PNUgen complex, or slowly roasting to death while facing off against Meni, one of Eve's aces — I always end up figuring that I was too stingy about my approach with life."

"I looked for the perfect person, or the ideal circumstances where I could be happy and in the meantime I just worked tirelessly toward my goals," she explained. "And when it seemed like I was dying, I realized that by waiting this much for something that would match my high standards, I ultimately ended up with nothing."

Kotori shifted, adjusting her position back to correctly sitting before Kôsuka. "But I look at what other nekos do, being less reserved than me such as Hanako... and, it's sad, but I'm generally moved to contempt. I see them sharing themselves freely and what I compare that to is... cheap sake! Available, inexpensive, not very sought after nor precious."

"So, I think: I don't want to be like them," the princess shared. Kôsuka was likely the only person she could really admit this to. "Being me, wanting more, being more reserved... I feel that makes me not only less brazen, but more precious. More sought after. Worth having. This said, is my sense of self worth important enough for me to end up in these awful moments at the brink of death, feeling I had nothing for myself?"

"The truth is, I haven't figured it out." Kotori sighed. "I wish I had. The feelings I had for Nyton were mostly platonic. I held him dear. I really did. But I was not ready to love him like the woman he hoped I could be. I was five years old, and I still wanted things to stay the way they were. I was happy with the status quo. But he wasn't, and I was not going to lead him on selfishly like that anymore. He has been too good, too self-sacrificing to me to deserve that."

Kôsuka had peppered Kotori throughout her talking with stiff, approving nods. Clearly Kotori's hahaue was pleased.

"You will, in time. I have been told it is a fine balance, between sharing yourself and withholding yourself, and that it takes some a long time to find it. Others find it so fast, you wonder why you can't find it so easily."

Kôsuka wished she could speak from experience, but there was no experience there. She had chosen to birth Kotori by herself.

"A long time..." Kotori's voice trailed off and she breathed out before wanly adding: "My love life has ever been a mess. From Sylvester, to Sydney, to Yukari and Nyton. I'm really not expecting it to change."

She sounded resigned to it, but the discussion made her remember something that coaxed a faint smile on her face.

"Well, at least I know it's not for a lack of not being popular so much as a lack of opening up to others," Kotori brushed her left hand back through her hair, and when she retracted it back, it was with hairlocks that she brought over her shoulder. She machinally began stroking them top-to-bottom, fingertips sliding over shining raven-black strands. "After that Project SWEETHEART deathmatch, when I joined the Star Army training program, the other trainees made a big deal out of me."

"I got compliments. Some thought me very cool because I was good at apparently everything; no small thanks to the samurai training I had before then. Others felt I had poise; again demeanor mostly cultivated back with the samurai. I was also very pretty to them, though that felt awkward coming from other nekos whom had been built to be pretty. Prettiness is cheap in Yamatai, seeing it's so common.

"All I did was keep clean, care for my hair the way Margaret styled it for me, be respectfully polite and humble toward others... and work really really hard to perform because even after surviving Project Sweetheart, my life still depended on performing and not proving myself defective. I had no time to dilly dally, so I always gave everything my best. I wasn't concerned with passing evaluations so much as being perfect.

"Somehow, that had people glued to me like bees to honey. I didn't get it; I wasn't doing anything to lead them on. If anything, I was trying to live up to Sylvester-san's Love is not sharing a bed, it is sharing a life motto. Some of the braver ones took more initiative, which I tried to rebuff. More daring ones went even further to make me like them, like being with them, like what they could do to me."

Kotori scrunched her nose at those memories. "I soon learned to have the reflex to kick very hard when anyone snuck up to me when resting in the pit. I think it's mostly from that point that I really resolved myself to be more exclusive, to reserve myself for the right person, and to value personal living space."

"Sydney wasn't too bad to look at from the beginning, but-" Kotori snerked. "Really, the huge draw to the Sakura were the living accomodations. A Nozomi scout's bunkroom versus quarters that, at the worst, I'd share with a single other person on separate beds? That sounded heavenly to me."

As a mother, Kôsuka realized the inner look she was getting into her daughter's life, so she was respectful about listening. The details were things she never knew, and she soaked them up while she could. Only moments ago, we were nearly at each other's throats.

It made her proud to know how her daughter handled herself. She valued herself that much. It was a rare quality in their species, especially among new Neko. To have survived Project SWEETHEART and come out this way ... it was nothing short of amazing to Kôsuka.

"When the right person comes along, you'll know. That is what Chizuru-sensei told me, about a year ago, when she complained about my solitude. I told her my right people were my students, and that I did not need sex with them to be intimate with their minds. That was what matters to me. Maybe the same will be for you."

"Eeeeh, she weedled at you about that?" Kotori couldn't help but smile as she twirled her hair around her fingers. "Has she found anyone for herself?"

Kôsuka rolled her eyes. "She has her sweets. We should be so lucky she hasn't tried to find anything else. She poked Kei about it too, but thankfully she didn't give in to answering her questions. Kei, of all people! That poor soul just needs time to grow."

"So..." Kotori's face fell into a deadpan expression. "You're giving me advice on my lovelife, but are devoid of any experiences of your own... so you go and resort to advice someone else gave you, whom also has no lovelife of her own to speak of."

Kotori gave her mother a hooded look. "Then, out of the three of us, I'm actually the one with the most experience? I knew I was wordlier in some ways due to having branched out, but... this makes us look like a pretty sorry lot."

The mother laughed. She pitched her head back and let out laughs right from her belly, shaking her swords a little bit as she did. A pretty sorry lot! Kotori was so right it was too funny not to laugh.

It took a moment for her to calm down, leaning her head forward and wiping at one of her eyes. "You! You, daughter — hah! Hah hah. Yes, you have the most experience, and look where the three of us are! One cloistered, one with a sweet-tooth, and one searching for her companion still. A sorry lot indeed!"

Kotori felt her mother was enjoying that a little too much, but did not care to add more negativity. The bombshells she had come with before and how that had made her mother so distraught was enough.

"Well, in any case... the matter with Eve is closed," she told Kôsuka. "When we fought Eve at the Blue Rift Expanse and killed her body, the information I gleaned from her mind pointed to three locations on Yamatai where she had mental backups stored for contigencies. For the last couple of weeks, I infiltrated those bases, killed Eve — she really looked more like 'Naraku' there, though — if she was present and trying to rebuild her assets, wiped out any lingering records of her mind, and then moved on to the next base."

"I actually took one of her safehouses for myself, but I was recently evicted by SAINT so I don't really have anyplace to go back to, except you count a small clunky corvette or a cramped robot." Kotori tossed the hair back over her shoulder and then slowly drew her legs to her before hugging her knees. "If I don't go after Yui, I'm going to have to figure out what to do of myself next."

Kôsuka tipped her head to the side, considering potential options. Single-handedly killing Eve — multiple times — and being "evicted" by SAINT were not major shocks to her. Not after everything Kotori had been through, and done. That aside, it was not Kotori's most pressing concern, so Kôsuka did not make it her own. "I would suggest staying here, but that's impossible for more than a couple days. Souuuuuu ... perhaps buy an apartment in Kyôto?"

"Using my own money would make me pretty easy to track down by SAINT," Kotori mused aloud. "I'm not sure it's a good idea to not confront them from an obvious position of strength."

Kôsuka took the worry at face value. After she considered her daughter's powers, Kôsuka imagined she too would want to hide from SAINT. And Irim, she thought.

"Why not ask me?" she said.

Kotori smirked. "You have money?" She let the words hang for a few seconds before saying: "I'm thinking of confronting the Premier, Ketsurui Yuumi. She had a lot of gall, deciding to lie about what I was actually up to. I don't care about why she needed to work it up for the media, but it gives me reason to seek her out and demand concessions. One of the least which would be to have room at the Imperial Palace."

"I am a Ketsurui Princess, after all."

Kôsuka deadpaned. "That is a long way from plotting to kill the Mistress of the Star Army. But I know Yuumi. She is ... wily. But reasonable. I think you will like her."

 

[Doshii Jun]

Kotori looked at her mother as if in a new light. Though when she spoke, it was to say: "Hahaue, I do not believe I have ever seen you go deadpan like that, ever."

"I have never had reason to with you, daughter," Kôsuka replied with a verbal shrug.

Closing her eyes, Kotori loftily returned. "Then I shall savor this unique moment, and preserve this precious memory for the sake of posterity!"

"Don't savor too hard. The way you're growing up, I'm sure I'll have to use it again." Kôsuka's face cracked into a grin.

"Oh," Kotori rose to her feet, joined her hands together and then gave a proper bow. "I appreciate your generous consideration, hahaue... but I fear that alas, I am mostly done growing up."

Kotori rose from the bow and struck a more girlish pose to make her outfit stand out more, amble sleeves, butterfly knot and all. "If that was not the case, Sonoda-san would have had a harder time making me look like this."

"Your mind has some catching up to do with your body, daughter." Kôsuka regarded her anyway.

Kotori hid a smile behind one sleeve, though the laughter could still be seen in her amber eyes. "Ah, but I am now older than you were when you came to the Sakura, Hahaue."

"And yet," Kôsuka said, wagging a mental finger at Kotori while smiling herself, taking in her daughter's appearance.

Sonoda had, as expected, done an exceptional job. Kotori was not just a princess, but a fighting princess, a warrior of the royal clan who led from the front. She was not a fashion guru by any means, but she recognized the blending of the elegance of court attire and the function of Samurai garb. At any moment Kotori was seen in that outfit, she would be recognizable; she was unique as well as a presence that demanded attention.

"You will see Yuumi wearing all of that, yes? She will be impressed."

"I asked Sonoda-san to help me look the part of a Ketsurui Princess. Now that I do, it would be disingenuous not to use it." Kotori looked at the sleeve she had raised and then noted, "It is my armor. My symbol of the people whom think of me as a princess. Not only the people I can rule over, but also serve."

"Even when I am not confident, wearing it, I can at least act the part. If that's not enough —" With a downward flick of her wrist she dislodged the folded kama held in the sleeve to have it fall into her waiting hand, where she grasped it and triggered the release of the switchblade just as she slashed across the air with it.

The blade of Eve's kama glittered darkly, contrary to the glassy purity of Kotori's transparent zesuaium blades. "...I can also cut."

! Kôsuka looked at the blade and withheld her contempt. She instead considered the weapon.

Not six months ago, she might have frowned upon the thing, and its likely mate — Yuri had used such weapons — because of its basis, in her mind, in trickery. But after Kei's test and her use of ... unorthodox arms, she had a difficult time faulting Kotori from using the arms at her disposal.

The original owner apparently had no problem with Kotori using them. Kôsuka still kept her expression neutral; she disapproved of trophies on principle.

"A true warrior princess," Kôsuka repeated. She paused for a couple of beats before cocking her head. "I don't think Naraku had switchblade mechanisms on hers. Your touch?"

"Some form of Kusari-gama seemed common amongst the Daughters of Eve," Kotori answered as she manipulated the kama to carefully rotate the blade back securely into its handle. "The Eve we fought had these. I figure the switchblades made them more convenient for her to carry. The same goes for me."

As far as Kôsuka knew Kotori never trained in the use of the kama, and yet she manipulated the weapon with familiarity. As if answering to that unsaid question, Kotori tucked the weapon back into the inner folds of the sleeve meant to magnetically hold it in place and said: "Eve's mind has a wealth of knowledge and experience on how to use the kama. Experience that exceeds mine with swords."

She patted the sleeve twice to make sure the weapon was secure and turned her full attention back to Kôsuka. "The use of the kama involves much less strength than a sword. It's been easier to adjust Eve's combat style to my weaker-limbed NH-29 body, in comparison to adjusting Yui's experience. Yui was rarely ever the underdog in a fight."

Kôsuka cocked her head the other way, regarding what she heard some before straightening. Her daughter's reasoning made good tactical sense. ... But there was a concern.

"So you are not the master of the weapons, but you have a master inside you. Your manipulations and moves are not instinctual, are they?"

"You are right," Kotori agreed. "I can consult, pick and choose what to borrow fairly quickly... but it is still not mine. In some cases, mimicry is as good as the real thing. But when facing masters, like I did when I fought toe-to-toe one of the Narakus, the illusion of skill does not hold up as well... and then all I can seem to rely on is my own."

"Your own defeated three Narakus, so it's not all bad, youngling," Kôsuka said with the hint of a smirk. "I sense that you need only time, and you'll have much of it.

"Speaking of. You will be going to see Yuumi. I don't want to keep you. ... But if you want to rest and ponder your next moves for when you meet her, this is a very quiet place," she said, gesturing to her little apartment with her eyes.

Kotori flicked a glance back toward the door, behind which there was still a blizzard going on. "I think it would be wiser to leave only after the blizzard has abated."

"Then stay," Kôsuka replied, slowly standing up. She took the tea cup before Kotori, and her own, and made her way to the kitchen, talking as she went. "I will make more tea. This time, peppermint with lots of honey, just as Chizuru-sensei used to make it. Now she drinks soda, because she is sensei and who can tell her not to?"

Kotori made a face at the mention of soda. She had never liked carbonated beverages. "I could," she offered, craning her head around to follow Kôsuka. Said offer lacked conviction, though.

She was tempted to follow her mother into the kitchen, watch her brew the tea, perhaps even help... but after reflection Kotori decided not to and she remained kneeling by the table. That was more like a guest, letting the other be a proper host... and besides it was sometimes nice to be fussed over.

Kôsuka spoke from the simple kitchen she had, which was by far the most modern area of her apartment. The food she had was there to entertain guests (usually NH-29 students), so much of it was simply cooked and simply consumed. However, Kôsuka's tastebuds wanted for something more than that. She wanted to give Kotori at least some semblance of a life at home.

So she talked from the kitchen, which was barely 10 feet away from where Kotori sat, through a gap in the walls that hid the horizontal counters and cupboards.

"You must be hungry as well, youngling," she said. "I have many things in the fridge. Come here and pick something I can make for you that won't make your breath sour for Yuumi."

That broke Kotori's dilemma and she stood up after all, neatly brushing the folds out of her skirt before quietly padding to the kitchen with small steps. She opened the fridge and bent to study its content before she pointed out some simple meal possibilities:

"You have milk, so you can make tamagoyaki with the eggs. The canned sardines are not great on their own, but with rice you can use them as filling for onigiri. Or you could go the way of a rice omelet." Kotori raised her head, turning back to her mother, and added: "It depends on the seasonings you have."

Kôsuka cocked her head as she looked at the tea on the stove. What did she have in the way of spices, anyway ... not many, she thought.

"Tamagoyaki probably is best. Those sardines are good filler for them." She reached under the oven to pull out the cookware drawer, where she pulled out her rectangular tamagoyaki pan. "I might have some pepper and sea salt in the far cupboard by the window. Take a look there and see what you find while I get this ready."

Kotori took some eggs out of the fridge, handed those to Kôsuka, took the sardine cans out to set on the counter, and then fliched salt and pepper out of the pointed-out cupboard to set close to Kôsuka before hunting for the rice maker. "So, you want sardines as omelet-filling too?" she asked for confirmation. "Do you prefer a rice bowl as sidedish, or nigiri?"

"Bowl," Kôsuka said. "Nigiri is more fun when it has sprinkle stuff." The Samurai used the term "sprinkle stuff" for anything she could sprinkle on riceballs. "I also will take extra salt on mine." The eggs, which were pre-made batter from a carton, already were sizzling in the pan, which Kôsuka kept a hand on while she pushed the batter around. "Do you take cheese in your tamago, daughter?"

"Surprise me," was Kotori's smiling reply before she cracked the sardine can open, set it on the counter next to Kôsuka, and then got to starting the rice cooker. She had the impulse to roll her sleeves to avoid getting them dirty, but the concealed kamas made that an unlikely prospect. She compensated by being more careful with her movements.

"A dangerous choice! You will not regret it." Kôsuka let the egg batter form up for the first few rolls while she reached into the fridge and pulled out a baggie of shredded cheese. It was cheese she must have shredded herself. "Kei always made her eggs with this. Cheese with Nepleslian peppers diced into it. It's a little hot, but the taste always makes for a healthy morning and day." She spread a liberal amount into the batter, set the baggie aside, then cut the batter up with her flipper into three squares. She then flipped each.

Kotori justified her bravery by simply replying: "My ship had a Raltean cook." As the rice cooked, she prepared two bowls and fetched the saltshaker from Kôsuka's side of the kitchen.

"Raltean," Kôsuka repeated, her cringing coming through her tone. "We have a few Samurai that trained in that area for a few months. Very heavy cooking. Lots of red meat. A wonder you didn't come back with more curves."

Kôsuka laughed at her own little poke at Kotori's lithe body — not that Kôsuka was better.

"It's a wonder I came back with a tongue at all," Kotori countered. "Tom was initially very biased towards greasy, buttery Raltean dishes. To his credit, he tried hard to diversify the menu... but I figured maybe it was just me whom was hard to impress with food. All he knew was that I was partial to fish, especially salmon, but I never made an open display of my likes."

"Yukari did, though." Kotori continued as she opened drawers in search of ustensils. "She litterally would swoon over his cooking-"

Kotori cut herself off and asked: "All I see is disposable chopsticks here. Where are the rest of your ustensils?"

"Cooking hashi are inside the drawer below the rice cooker. They're plain bamboo. If you want eating ones, look in the drawer below the cupboard where you found the salt and pepper. I keep the nice ones there."

Kotori gave a silent nod and went to search under the cupboard before extracting her prizes and setting them next to the bowls, then also retrieving a serving spoon for the rice.

"I always thought the way people show pleasure, like Yukari with Tom's Okonomiyaki, was a bit ridiculous," she continued from where she had left off. "Or how people can be liable to turn dependent and needy when being recipients to pleasure. It never was that way for me; pleasure never ruled me. Maybe it's because I'm too proud?"

The rice cooker's alarm went off, and Kotori went to attend it.

"People are strange," Kôsuka said, placing the first three tamago on a plate and wrapping them around sardines. "Who knows what people get out of the strange things they do? Your Yukari friend might just want to make her man happy. If he likes it, there might not be any harm, but she always struck me as unstable anyway. She dated you, didn't she? Then turned around and went for a man instead. Typical of our species, I fear."

"You're wrong in her regard," Kotori quietly defending her friend and former-XO as she opened the rice cooker and started scooping out rice. "The relationship Yukari and I had, from the beginning, was transitory. We knew what we wanted, and it did not end up with us being with each other. Yukari was more fortunate, and found what she was looking for first."

Kôsuka's bowl Kotori served with one scoop of rice, then sprinkled salt a few times before adding another scoop of rice and repeating the process until the bowl was full. For hers, she added salt, but only to the surface.

"If I truly had wanted to stay with Yukari, I would've fought for her. It's Tom luck that I was looking out more after her happiness than my own," Kotori finished, her tone confident when she compared Tom to herself as a rival for Yukari's affection.

"Well, you are my daughter," Kôsuka replied, pouring more egg batter into the pan to make three more. "He only is Yamataian. Inferior! Jokes aside, it is a wonder she found a man so fast and kept him so hard. Though I did see him on the awards broadcast. He is a catch. Tall, but very nice looking." Not that Kôsuka herself had much of a reference, the Samurai thought. "I still don't believe she is very stable. I bet ... oh, what was it. Kei referenced Yuri finding a student like this once. The 'crazy' kind that are wild in bed. She strikes me as one of those. All wound up tight and then, her man comes along and snap! She unwinds. Hmph."

Kôsuka began wrapping the sardines with the new egg, having cooked these ones without cheese. "You would be the envy of any person's arm you took, or vice versa. Tom indeed is a lucky one to have not faced you."

"I know," Kotori absently answered as she picked up the rice bowls and brought them over to the table. Yukari needs Tom to be happy. So, no one gets to kill him before I do. That's how it is.

"Besides which, she sounds unworthy of someone like you. You should have someone more like Nyton. He's a nice man, you know." Kôsuka nodded to herself, confirming the statement — then froze, plate of tamago in hand. That statement ... sounded oddly motherly. Even for her.

... She smiled to herself, and did a little mental fist-pump of happiness.

"Yes, Hahaue," Kotori tolerantly answered to the motherly prattle as she returned for the chopsticks. "We discussed Nyton earlier, remember?"

"Yes yes, I know," Kôsuka said, passing her daughter with the tamago to set on the table. "You should ask Yuumi. I'm sure she knows many men that could fit your type."

Kotori did not sense enough sarcasm in her mother's voice with that statement. She chose to blandly counter with: "You mentioned before that I would like Yuumi. For all we know, she might be my type." She took the tamago plate along with the chopsticks and walked back to the kotatsu.

Kôsuka welcomed her with an unamused stare. " ... That's better than shacking up with Yui or Irim, but she is a politician. Be careful. ... But she's pretty enough to stand next to you. You don't overshadow her too much."

Kotori looked up from arranging the plates on the table. "Overshadow?" She had never considered herself in that light. To Kotori, nekos were created equal. It was how they carried themselves that made the difference. For Kotori, it was generally with drive and confidence, in a way in which she tried to cultivate her feminity.

"Neko are not all made the same," Kôsuka said, walking back for the tea. "Yukari does not have your hair, your body type, your eyes. Mentally all Neko start the same and grow from there, but our bodies only change when we change them for new ones. Visuals always make the first impression, and with you, well ... Yuumi simply is not as appealing as you are. I think she knows that."

The Samurai brought the tea back, and poured a steaming cup for Kotori using fancier blue cups. Kotori could smell the honey. "She is like you, in a way. She does not let her beauty get the best of her, but more so, she does not have as much of it. That I think is what she is thankful about: she doesn't have to fight perceptions of being just another lovely Neko face. Yuumi is all business, and she suffers nothing that stalls getting to it."

"Mm," Kotori nodded, though she felt it was dangerous to perceive her own looks in that light; as if that notion lacked humility. "Well, I intend to seek her out because of her being a politician — or is it in spite of that?"

The Samurai nodded and considered what else she could say. "Yuumi also thinks on her words before speaking. She knows the power of words. Keep that in mind."

"I know how to play by those rules too." Kotori smiled back and waited Kôsuka had served herself before joining her hands together to mime a prayer. "Itadakimasu."

END