AND I DON'T GIVE A FUUUUUUUCK Demetrious !!L5ZJSzZGWv 2013/07/12 (Fri) 05:57 No. 171487 ▼ File 137360863017.png - (373.15KB, 450x600 , 531e672935618cd081a3d42652f05348.png)
You wake to the smell of food.
You scan the room from under one bleary eyelid. Resting on the end-table is a tableau of wonders; biscuits, bacon, toast, orange juice and steaming hot caffeine. Keine still has you wrapped firmly in her slender, soft, steel-strong arms as she slumbers against your back, so you slide your flattened palm out and make the gentle come-hither gesture for Mage Hand.
Quietly and gracefully, the tray sits perfectly still and does nothing. Right. You already cast Mage Hand. A few times, as you recall. Among other things. The tray of sweet sustenance lies just out of reach, taunting you.
Maybe a familiar would come in handy now and then.
You squiggle and squirm out of Keine's deathgrip, inching your fingertips closer to the end table. With just a hairsbreadth of purchase, you could slide it across the sheets and into your waiting maw.
Almost there.
Aaaalmoooost theeeeeere-
“Hurk,” you protest weakly as Keine sucks you back in, her breasts pressing into your shoulderblades. “Whurr u goin,” she murmurs.
“Aren't you hungry?” you ask pointedly.
“Not any more,” she replies, nibbling your shoulder. Well, you know how to handle a tight grapple – your old favorite, Grease. The words rise to your tounge, and... right. Cast that, too.
Keine squeezes you close, inhaling deeply, like she'll never hold you this close again – and reluctantly releases you with a gusty sigh. Soon you're both sitting up in bed, attacking breakfast with gusto.
“What in creation...?” Keine marvels, sniffing at her mug.
“Coffee,” you tell her. “A bit like very strong black tea, but richer. A bit of an acquired-”
“Hmm,” she says appreciatively, sipping at it. “What do you put in it?”
“Anything you'd put in tea,” you reply. “Sugar, milk, you know.”
“Anything a demented heathen would put in tea, then,” Keine says a bit primly. “Milk, indeed.” She sips at her coffee again, mug held in one dainty hand while the other clasps the bedsheet over her chest. She finishes the mug in one go, tilting her head back as she drains it.
“.... what?” she mutters, catching your stare. “I'm conservative, but I still enjoy foreign cuisine.”
You continue to study. When Keine realizes the subject, she blushes, pulling the sheet a bit higher, only serving to tighten the fabric against her curves. “What?!”
“You are smoking hot,” you reply instantly.
Keine's blush brightens, but she smiles down at the bedsheet. “Thanks, handsome.”
“Specifically,” you insist. “You've got those perfectly-sculpted features and pale skin and blue-white eyes and long flowing blueish hair, that whole flawless, impersonal beauty thing like a water nymph or something, but they're like fucking an ice cube or so I've read but you, you've got hips and breasts and goddamn geometries, woman, like, god damn.”
Keine's managed to gather half the quilt over her without upsetting her breakfast, the tray balanced happily on the same patch of fabric as she shuffles more under it.
“And that finds the primal breeding button in a guys head and tap-dances on it which should be lewd as hell but you're still classy and elegant and... this” you say, sweeping your hand to summarize Keine's bright scarlet blush competing with scandalized dignity. “How are you not taken yet?”
Wait.
“... how are you not taken yet?” you repeat, the question gaining gravity. “I really don't know anything about you, Keine.”
“You're learning plenty enough from field observations,” she mumbles huskily, her burning face turned away from you.
You scoot closer and wrap an arm around her shoulders. “I stumbled across a diary in your study the other day. A rather old diary.”
She stiffens instantly. “How much did you read!?”
“Nothing,” you reply, rubbing your hip where her elbow just grazed you. “Just enough to realize who's it was.”
“Oh,” she replies, mollified. She slumps against you.
You wait a full thirty seconds.
“So?”
“What?” she replies.
“Aren't you going to tell me anything?”
“Like what?”
“How old are you?”
“Uh...”
“After what we just did, your right to be self-conscious about your age is undeniably forfeit,” you say. “Spill, dammit.”
She smacks your thigh through the quilt. “Hush, I'm thinking – it's... oh. I'll be a hundred in a few months.”
You blink. Your Tounges spell expired sometime while you slumbered, so you've been conversing in Draconic. “Sorry. Spell that out for me?”
She does.
You look down at her.
“Excuse me. The hell?”
“I'm a were-hakutaku, remember?” Keine says, nestling closer to you. “I was born human... to human parents. Human family. Just like any other girl. But I can expect to live... a lot longer.”
“Like...?”
“With my power... as long as I want, really.” She makes a little, weak shrug. “At least one of my predecessors lived a few thousand years.”
“Bit of a long-term commitment,” you observe.
Keine chuckles ruefully. “Yeah. Even if someone got past – everything else, I'd have to deal with that.”
“Everything else?”
“You've seen firsthand. With the Society. Like I said yesterday – youkai and humans have been slaughtering each other for centuries. Millennia, even. Youkai were born of human fears; they are fear. Fearing youkai is literally instinctive, you understand? It's bone-deep. Even though the hakutaku isn't one of those, people just can't turn off that instinct, you know?”
“A little,” you say. “There's always this awkward moment when people realize you're capable of reaching up reality's asshole and turning it inside-out. Or theirs, for that matter?”
She twists around to give you a skeptical look. “Really?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She grimaces and settles back against you. “The other day, in the garden...”
“Yes?” she says, tensing slightly.
“You said something about your first kiss?”
“Was that before or after the pavilion was animated by some horrendously powerful entity and almost killed you?”
“Right before!” you exclaim, positive. “We were talking about each others first date.”
“You're incredible, she mutters, admiration and admonishment mixing in her tone.
“So, how many...?” you twirl your finger in the air suggestively.
“A few,” she says sadly. “But... it never lasts.”
“Because you turn into a hakutuaku on the full moon and eat him,” you fill in.
Keine's entire body tenses so quickly you can almost hear her muscles thrumming like a plucked bowstring.
“Who told you.”
“You did.”
She pulls away from you, just slightly. “Did you use one of those mental spells?”
“Induction,” you say. “I induced it from the way you jumped like a thunder-shy horse in a Dwarven concert hall every time anybody even mentioned it in passing.”
Keine clasps her arms across her midsection tightly.
“I'm not afraid,” you say gently.
“... you should be,” she says, barely audible.
“Is it that bad?”
“A hakutaku is, uh... 'wise'. Not in any way humans know the word. Not akin to mountaintop hermits or old men with much experience. Its godlike wisdom, inherent to the earth, to creation itself. It's primal. And it does not suffer fools.”
“Doom on me, then.”
“Do not jest,” she says, sounding wounded and miserable. “I'm fucking terrifying. I look at someone and without thinking, without trying to think about that information I access it, I know them. I know what they've done, what they want, their darkest desires. And I judge them.” She's shivering under your arm now, clutching at her belly like something's trying to eat its way out. “I say it. To their face. And even if they can live with it, they've got to live knowing that I know. Knowing I could rip them apart like a paper doll if I ever decide they deserve it.”
The words roil in your gut, painfully familiar. “Oh.”
“And when I ch-change,” she continues, a whimper beginning to enter her voice, “I- I b-become-”
“Stop,” you choke out, pulling her tight against you and pressing her head against your shoulder. “We'll deal with that when the time comes, okay?”
“B-but-”
“I know what I want, Keine. And you've seen what I can do when I'm after something I want.”
She sniffles, then nods against your chest. “Okay.”
“For now, we've got other things to do.”
She nods again, smiling as she sits up and wipes away her tears. “Right,” she says shakily. “Right.” With a problem at hand, the cool, confident scholar emerges. “You just tried to murder Remilia, blatantly disregarding the spell-card dueling rules and marking yourself as a dangerous rouge.”
“Gee, thanks for the summary,” you say dryly. “But have I really? Who actually knows I almost killed her, at this point? Besides her own people?”
“Anybody with eyes?” Keine says. “Aya's probably wallpapered the town square with pictures of the hole in the Mansion's roof by now.”
“Oooh,” you croon as realization dawns. “So by causing extreme property damage, I have tellingly departed from my norm.”
“... point,” Keine agrees. “Remilia could make the claim, but she's not a chance of defaming anybody I'm supporting, especially in the Village. And she won't go to Yuyuko or...” her face darkens, “whoever else is 'involved,' because they're her enemies.”
“Right,” you say. “So why not go right to Yuyuko and report mission accomplished? Let her think we've won. Buy some time before she's on our asses like lava on Remilia?”
“Hmm...” Keine muses. “But that'd only last till Remilia's next move, and... the full moon is soon. At the peak of my power I can eat her, her ghosts and her damn lackeys, too. And she knows it. She's up against a time limit. And we still don't know what Kanako and Suwako are up to; what's so important that Kanako threatened you in as many words.”
“You think they're connected?”
“You remember what she said,” Keine says. “She all but spelled out the philosophy Remilia and her... benefactors are operating on. They're playing their own game, in their own corner, but by the same rules. It might be very useful to know what they're up to – play both ends against the middle.”
“Or bring them down on us when Sanae runs crying to mamma about the scary people offering her candy to step into an alley,” you point out.
Keine shrugs. “Well, did you have anything else in mind? Aside from trying to kill a ghost? In the netherworld?”
You nod. “I hurt Remilia. I beat that batty bitch within an inch of her unlife. She's going to want regeneration, in a hurry. And for that, she'll need food.” You scowl, a dark, turgid anger creeping into you just thinking about it. “And if I know anything about vampires, she's got half a dozen poor bastards chained in her basement like a damn demonic snack-bar.”
Keine gapes at you. “You want to go back!?”
“And get them out. Maybe drop them on Ram-you's front lawn and let them scream bloody vampire a bit, for good measure. Before that fucking beast is feeling peppy enough for snack-time.”
Decisions, decisions.
[ ] Fuck with Yuyuko's head.
[ ] Take Sanae downtown for questioning.
[ ] The Great SDM Escape.
[ ] Write-in.
These are all time-sensitive and thus mutually exclusive (probably), unless somebody comes up with something quite clever. Further elaboration/refinement of options is also a good idea, feel free to throw it in to a regular vote.
