#yet another competition server to be in... YIPPEE

[ravenconspirac3]

The Quixivists stared at that chart for so long.

We held ahold of that screenshot like it was some vault treasure /silly /hj

me, a while ago, looking at that one screenshot of the chart of all the sherbs and their worlds: “yup! there’s no spoilers in here!”

shows chart to chat:

me: “SHIT THIS HAD THE SUB SERVER WRITTEN ON IT—“

…and I’ve tried to play that off for months—

[curedeity]

 Gasher's Repose

Summary: Madoka does not battle, she has many other ways to pass the time though. And sometimes, she passes the time together.

   Madoka wouldn’t call her engineering a hobby. At this point, it was more a prospective career. She still enjoyed doing it, but she could have fun doing more than a singular thing. And having a wide range of talents and interests was quite important.

    Everyone wanted to participate in Battle Bladers. It was no surprise, they were all very competitive, and given the danger of the Dark Nebula organization, they’d want as many people they knew competing in the tournament as possible.

    But that didn’t mean Madoka didn’t have objections to it.

    Well, not objections so much as stipulations.

    “Does this look good?” Kenta frowned as he flipped over the piece of chicken he was grilling under Madoka’s watchful eye. If Kenta was going to be traveling alone (because he was too stubborn to have Gingka babysit him) she sure as hell wasn’t going to be letting him eat dogshit the entire time.

    “Hm…” Madoka inspected the piece of meat. “5 more minutes and we’ll check it again. It should be lighter.”

    Kenta sighed and slipped the piece back over letting it sizzle in the pan. He had agreed enthusiastically to the lessons, as Kenta was prone to do. His eagerness was always welcome, but Madoka could tell that the amount of time she had kept him cooking was starting to grate on even him.

    It had started with her teaching him a simple recipe for pancakes, then how to properly prepare veggies, and now onto how to cook meat. 

    “When’d you learn to cook Madoka?” Kenta asked absent-mindedly as he kept his eyes on the chicken.

    Madoka paused, the memory coming to her with frightening yet relieving ease. “Well my grandma showed me a few recipes, she really loved to cook,” Madoka reminisced, rustling through her shelves. “But I was pretty young so I didn’t learn much, it was only later that- Aha!-” Madoka pulled a book out of the mess. “-She gave me this family recipe book and I learned a lot from following the instructions in it.”

    She passed the book to Kenta, who paged through it carefully. It was decorated with simple illustrations, and a few photos that Madoka believed her grandmother had taken. The pages were worn down from the constant use Madoka put it through, and the pages yellowed with age.

    “Hey, you’ve made us this before!” Kenta said, his voice rising excitedly into an almost yell as he pointed at a cake recipe. Madoka leaned over his shoulder, nodding. 

    “That’s one of my favorite sweets to make.” Grandma had used to make it on her birthday, chocolate peanut butter cake topped with caramel coated nuts. That cake was the reason Madoka thanked biology every day for not giving her a peanut allergy.

    “It’s one of my favorites to eat,” Kenta mumbled, and Madoka hid her giggle as a clearing of the throat.

    “All the recipes in there are very good, tried and tested through my family for generations,” Madoka winked. “You can use the book any time if you want to try cooking something new, even I haven’t gone through everything yet.”

    “There’s just so much, how am I going to learn to cook this all?” Kenta continued to flip through the book, only this time with a mounting horror.

    Madoka hummed, quickly trying to think of words to dispel her young friend’s fears. “Well, most of it is just about learning the basics. Like most things, baking is just a combination of elements. I’m hoping to teach you some simple elements so you can apply them while you travel.”

    Kenta nodded. Madoka could remember as a child how daunting that same cookbook had seemed, but that was so distant now. 

    Madoka laid her hand on Kenta’s shoulder, smiling down at him. “You’re doing great,” She praised. Kenta reacted well to compliments, and it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve some. He had patiently done what Madoka asked, and he was learning well.

    Kenta immediately smiled. “Thanks Madoka!” He chirped.

    Cooking was one of Madoka’s passions. A survival skill, but also a way to connect with others. She had learned so much about her family from this cookbook and now… well now she had shared it with Gingka and Kenta.

    It was really fun.

    Madoka sniffed, staving off happy tears. Her kitchen smelled of spice… and smoke.

    “Fuc-dge!” Madoka swore, spinning around as she and Kenta frantically turned off the stove and tried to salvage the chicken.

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    She cleaned everyone’s beys. Scanned them once more and updated the files she’d had on them. Cleaned her tools. Had her leftover pieces ready to be swapped in if a worse scenario happened during their next tournament battle. 

    Was there really nothing left to do?

    Her eyes roved over the supply case once again, and another time. Maybe she should make them shine, just a bit more.

    “No, bad Madoka,” She admonished her workaholic self, slapping the back of her palm lightly. “Just relax.” There was no more work left to do, and at this point all she’d be doing would be stressing herself out more. 

    Pulling out her computer, she hovered the cursor around, chewing her lip. There was still a while before night would truly set in, it was too early to sleep with the last rays of the sun still casting light. She didn’t really want to play a visual novel right now, too much reading. Finally, she decided upon a racing game, opening it up to the quiet sound effect of an engine revving.

    Madoka smirked as she joined a group. The race track was slowly decided, a beginner’s course. Shame, she had voted for the speed track, it had some rather unique mechanics she had learned to abuse.

    Coding was a skill that would take people years to learn. It was a slow process of building up equations and scripts until something came of it. Madoka was not a coder. Madoka had, however, gone into the files of some of her favorite games and maybe messed around with them a bit, just to find out exactly how the games worked.

    Needless to say, she knew how to play.

    Winning the first round was easy, as was the second and third. It felt cheap, in a way, to be playing against people who likely weren’t as experienced as her. But she didn’t have anyone else to challenge, and it’s not like losing should rob the game of its fun.

    Besides, they seemed to be enjoying ganging up on her.

    It felt like so long ago that she had met her new friends, when in reality it was only a year. In that year, however, she had become quite used to being startled. That’s why she didn’t even blink when Yu barged into her room, pulling Masamune behind, and flopped down on the bed beside her.

    “Madoka,” Yu whined, tugging at her arm. “I’m bored,”

    Yu was a very talented blader, Madoka had nothing but respect for his skill, her brain still echoing the time he had beaten Gingka. Yu was also a small brat.

    “And?” Madoka hummed, lapping one of the players that had gotten stuck in a sticky trap.

    “Masamune won’t play with me, he keeps saying he’s too busy.” Madoka could hear the pout in Yu’s words. She had been spending too much damn time with this kid to be able to recognize it this easily.

    “Well, when you’re the world’s number one blader, you have to keep practicing all the time,” Masamune scoffed. Oh, to have an ego that large, Madoka wished she knew the feeling.

    “Hm, you didn’t seem that busy yesterday when you were crying over a romcom, surely you can spend some time entertaining Yu,” Madoka pointed out. 

    Masamune spluttered, Yu yelled, “I wasn’t crying!” “I don’t need to be babysitted!”

    Madoka passed the finish line and logged out of the server, watching the tourney she had just destroyed get added to her ever increasing win rate, Then she leveled the two with the driest glare she, tiredly, could muster. Masamune reeled backwards, realizing his mistake, and Yu slammed his mouth shut.

    Really, this wasn’t abnormal or even a shock. They were all teenagers, with small attention spans and easily bruised egos. It was almost every day that an argument would break out over what to spend the day doing. Honestly, it seemed like the only thing they could agree on most of the time was beybattles.

    “How about this, I teach you both to play a racing game?” Madoka offered, pulling out some extra controllers she had and passing them off.

    Yu brightened immediately. “Oh yippee! Masamune, I’m gonna kick your ass!”

    “Language,” Madoka chastised as she synced the controllers in.

    “I’m number one, there’s absolutely no way I’m losing!”

    Madoka would never beat either of these two in a beybattle. This was not a problem for her, and she had no issues admitting it. Both were talented in their sport, and she respected that.

    But it did feel good to lap them in every single game they played.

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    Madoka didn’t take up new hobbies often. This was more from a lack of time to continue even her old ones than lack of interest. Now, stuck travelling so often, she ended up having more time on her hands than she even knew what to do with.

    She had to say, she never would’ve imagined herself learning to knit, yet here she was with a tutorial video opened in front of her.

    “I think you’re casting them on wrong,” Tsubasa frowned as he glanced between her tangled mess and the instructions. He was having his own problems, but had luckily made it through the casting stage.

    That didn’t mean he knew how to explain how he’d done it, Madoka was frustratingly coming to realize.

    “What are sides even? What are directions?” She mourned as she unknotted her abomination.

    Tsubasa shrugged, getting started on his second, lumpy and uneven row.

    It had been agreed upon by the entire time that they’d switch seats every time they traveled. As well as some of them could get along, if any of them spent too much time around the same single other person, blood would be shed.

    This time, it was Tsubasa’s and Madoka’s turn to hang out, while the other three snored away across the aisle. 

    “Maybe crochet is easier,” Madoka grouched.

    “I would fear trying to do anything like this with only a single needle,” Tsubasa replied gravely, his gaze full of fear as he pulled through another stitch.

    Madoka frowned, “I’m pretty sure crochet is more complicated than that.” It would have to be, wouldn’t it?

    Tsubasa shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” And Madoka couldn’t disagree with that statement.

    They had both decided to start easily. Madoka would be making a new scarf for Gingka. While in Russia, she had learned that his normal scarf, with all it’s length, had no volume or actual protection against the cold. It was an insult to scarves that she intended to rectify. Tsubasa was planning a small pouch to replace the old one on his belt, though she suspected he’d be better off buying a new one until he got the hang of knitting.

    Not that she could say any better for herself…

    “I’m going to be giving Gingka the lumpiest, most lopsided scarf in existence,” Madoka announced, finally finishing casting on. Yes her yarn had begun to fray, but at least it was on the needle now!

    “If it truly looks that awful, you could always give it to Director Ryo,” Tsubasa deadpanned.

    Madoka saw her opportunity and swooped in for the kill. “Unlike you, Director Ryo hasn’t practically adopted me yet, so the gift really would be coming out of nowhere.” Madoka… honestly didn’t know that much about Tsubasa, or many of her friends. It was always nice in moments like these to tease them about what she did know.

    Tsubasa spluttered and Madoka set down her knitting so she could cover up her laughs.

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    Being a mechanic for beys, Madoka really should’ve known more about astrology. It was always strange to remember that even Gingka knew more about constellations than she did. She wasn’t completely ignorant, but comparatively she was lacking.

    Yuki had lived his whole life revolved around the stars, learning to draw lines from brilliant dot to bright light every night. He was an actual expert among their group, and on the nights they camped out he proved it unintentionally.

    It didn’t take much to convince him to set-up a telescope at the hotel they’d be staying at for a few days.

    “So, the fall constellations should be out right now, do you know which ones those are Ms. Madoka?” Yuki asked, fiddling with the telescope as he tried to angle it just right. 

    “Yep, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a refresher,” Madoka smiled at the younger boy. 

    Yuki nodded, launching into an explanation Madoka only understood half of, because at some point he’d decided to go into the science behind the expansion of stars. It was quite interesting though, listening with one half of her brain, and looking up towards the tapestry of the sky with the other.

    He was so excited, and Madoka let herself get swallowed in that enjoyment.