fox-and-benedict

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Awkward, part 2

Series: 100% OJ / Suguriverse Words: 2372 Characters: Sora, Nath, Suguri, Hime Originally posted: March 31 2017 (link here) A/N: Sequel to Awkward. I commissioned Coffgirl for some cover art, and this was the first story that used it. Unlike on blogspot, I won’t post the cover art every time (since it takes up a lot of dash space and I don’t know how to format it very well yet), but it’s lovely art.

It was morning in the Suguri household. Birds were singing, eggs were frying, and Hime was as close to dressed as she was going to get. Suguri had surprised her earlier in the week with a gloriously fluffy pink dressing gown; Hime had very quickly decided that an existence spent wrapped in luscious softness was better than the alternative, and resolved to wear it at all points in time.

Suguri herself was still very much asleep, draped diagonally over the bed. When they ‘acquired’ Sora, Hime had been banished from her bean-bag sleeping spot and installed in Suguri’s bed, with a pillow wall for propriety. She had quickly discovered that Suguri was a very mobile sleeper, who tossed and turned until she finally came to a rest, star-shaped, with her silvery hair fanned out underneath her. The pillow wall, it turned out, was a meaningless formality; one way or another, Hime usually woke up with her friend snoozing on top of her.

Sora, on the other hand, was as still as a mountain when she slept. Whatever position she was in when she dropped off she would keep, and she occasionally settled in some very odd positions. Currently, she was kneeling on the floor with her head thrust face-first into the pillowy centre of her beanbag, snoring soundly. For the first few mornings after she arrived, Hime had tiptoed around her when making breakfast, but it soon became apparent that Sora woke up when she was good and ready, and no amount of noise or prodding would get her up any sooner.

The eggs were just about ready to be dumped out onto plates and married with thick, toasted bread when a knock came at the front door. Perhaps ‘knock’ was overly generous; it was more of a thump, which seemed to reverberate around the walls of the entire house. For a moment, Hime thought it might have been a visit from the postman, which to her was akin to being visited by the stork. It simply never happened. They lived too far off the beaten path, and whatever authorities were in their district were either friends of Suguri’s or were smart enough not to bother her.

“Yes, yes! I’m coming. You don’t need to kick the door down,” she called as she plated up breakfast and trotted through the living room, lightly balancing Sora’s plate on her back as she passed. Sora continued to snore, no doubt exploring the mysterious space inside her own head.

Hime didn’t know what she had been expecting when she opened the door. A lost traveller, perhaps, whose car broken down on the road, with whom she would embark on a wonderful adventure into the world of automobile repair, or potentially a misguided religious missionary who, like a sunflower turning its face towards the sun, would gratefully drink in her attention. She hadn’t been expecting Nath.

“I apologise for kicking your door,” Nath said. She had, unintentionally, begun to loom. She was tall, and habitually stood with her back perfectly straight, a look of careful neutrality stuck like glue to her features; looming was something of an occupational hazard for her.

Luckily, Hime was not a girl to be loomed at. She looked up at Nath’s impassive face, at her armless shoulders, and favoured her with a glittering smile. “I suppose I can forgive you, this once. Do you need a hand? Or two, as the case may be?”

Nath blinked. The number of people in the world who were brave enough to steal her joke right in front of her was very low. “I’m looking for Sora,” she said. Then, after a pause: “She has my nose.”

“I… see. Well, you’re certainly missing something, but your nose is still very much attached, as far as I can tell. I suppose I’m not an expert on the matter, though. How do you two know each other?”

Nath found herself caught between conflicting emotions. On some level, she realised that this was how other people felt when she made jokes about her limb deficiencies: they didn’t know quite how to respond to the joke. But on the other hand, she couldn’t help but like somebody as charming, fearless, and therefore dangerous, as Hime was proving herself to be.

“We tried to kill each other ten thousand years ago. Then we met again the other week. I told her where to find spoons. She stole my nose.”

Hime nodded, wondering privately if everybody from the past used the same strange type of dream-logic that Sora and her friend seemed to function on. “I see. She is here, but she’s asleep at the moment.”

“When are you expecting her to wake up? This year, or later?” Nath asked, concern worming its way onto her face.

“Well, I was rather hoping she’d be awake in the next ten minutes, or her else her breakfast will get cold.”

“Acceptable.” She paused. “I’m Nath.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hime,” the blonde said, her smile still sparkling. “Tell me, Nath. If I were to – on a whim – poke your cheeks right now, would you be able to do anything about it?”

“I suppose I couldn’t stop you,” Nath replied, her eyes narrowing, “but I might hurt you afterwards.”

“Hmhmhm. You might try. Come in, some in,” she said, beckoning with her hand. “We have eggs and toast and cocoa, the breakfast of gods.”

Inside, Nath found the house as confusing as she had found Hime. There was a barstool upside down on the kitchen table. A wicker chair had been colonised by some strange, fabric monster nested in the corner of the room. There was what appeared to be half a door with a table leg glued on, resting by near the kitchen; Nath assumed it had led to the pantry, but had been replaced with a bookcase on rollers. On closer inspection, the books contained seemed to be split evenly between the subjects of pirates and baking.

From deep within the heart of her beanbag, Sora moaned. “Himeeeeeeee. There’s something on my back.”

“Oh, you’re awake! Good morning, Sora. It’s a plate of food. How will you get yourself out of this predicament with your breakfast intact, I wonder?” Hime teased cheerfully.

“Uuuuuuuuuu.”

Nath watched incredulously as Sora began, slowly and carefully, to shimmy the plate down the length of her own back, until it was perched neatly on her bottom. With a quick jerk of her hips, she sent it skyward; then, like a cat righting itself in the middle of a fall, she flipped herself over and shot her hands up to catch the plate before any of the precious breakfast had left it. “Safe.”

“Bravo,” Hime said, and threw a knife and fork at her underarm. Sora plucked them out of the air with barely a thought, and began to munch on some toast. “You have a guest, by the way.”

Nath stepped forward, considerably less sure of herself than she was. She had intended to drop by, ascertain Sora’s location, engage in a little small talk about times past and then leave the girl to her own devices; still, she clung resolutely to her excuse for being there. “I have come to take my nose back.”

Sora stood up and looked at her. There was a peaceful smile on her face, but Nath had no idea what was going on inside her head. Her eyes gave no indication; they were like black holes that sucked in logic and spat out mystery. After a moment of thought, she held out a bite of fried egg on her fork. 

“Ahhhhhh.”

“Wh...ah. No thank you.”

Sora gestured impatiently with the fork. “Yes.”

“No.”

A moment’s pause. “I’ll wrestle you.”

“…Ugh. Fine,” Nath said, and rolled her eyes. Sora gently pressed the fork to her lips.

“Good?” Sora asked as Nath began to chew.

“Ish good,” Nath mumbled, grudgingly. She fought the urge to blush.

“My goodness,” Hime giggled. “That was magical. It was like seeing a unicorn.”

Nath had a glare that could weld steel girders, and she focused it directly on Hime’s forehead. Hime continued to smile, utterly unfazed. Meanwhile, Sora held out another bite of egg on the fork. “This is getting out of hand,” she muttered.

Her saviour came in the form of slippers on the stairs, an incomprehensible mumbling that came down from on high. Suguri had descended, warm and happy, one foot in the waking world and one still in the world of blissful sleep. She peered around the living room with bleary, half-closed eyes; details were lovely, but they could wait. Important things needed her attention, and one thing was more important than the rest.

“Hug.”

Nath watched, dumbstruck, as a silver-haired girl she didn’t know shuffled towards her, arms outstretched. Nothing that had happened today had made any sense. Hime wasn’t afraid of her – her, a former ultimate weapon. Sora operated on strange rules that were never explained. Now she was going to be the victim of an arbitrary hug attack. Luckily, Sora stepped forward to intercept her assailant. Gently, but firmly, the blonde-haired soldier turned Suguri around until she was pointing in Hime’s direction, and set her loose.

“Fluffy,” Suguri mumbled as she collapsed into her morning hug.

“Yes, yes,” Hime replied, nuzzling the top of her friend’s head. “You know, I sometimes wonder if you bought this dressing gown for my benefit, or for yours.”

Nath looked at Sora, who had long hair and made no sense to her, and at Suguri, who had long hair and made no sense to her, and then at Hime, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself. “You have two of them?” she asked.

“For my sins.”

“It’s as if you collect girls with long hair,” Nath remarked coolly.

“It’s not that I collect girls with long hair. It’s that this one collects blondes,” Hime chuckled, motioning at the girl in her arms. “Or perhaps Sora is collecting the world’s strongest women?”

Sora neither confirmed or denied it, which raised a lot of possibilities that didn’t bear thinking about. Instead, she turned to Nath. “Are you okay? You look confused.”

Nath frowned, and tried to marshal her words in a way that wouldn’t ignite a conflict. “Well… I do find the situation a little disarming,” she said. Suguri snorted. Good. It was enough. “I came because you invited me, but I don’t really know what I wanted. Other than my nose back, of course. I’m missing enough body parts.” This time, it was Hime’s turn to snort. “I… don’t really know how to react to this.”

Sora put a finger to her lips, allowing the words to turn over in her head. “Maybe you wanted to talk about the war?”

“Maybe. But I also don’t want to talk about the war. Or think about it,” Nath frowned. “I don’t know. When I look at you, Sora, it’s so obvious that you’ve changed. But I don’t feel like I’ve changed at all.”

For another moment, Sora was silent. Then she brought her gaze level with Nath’s. Such green eyes. Deep, and unfathomable. Oceans, unexplored. Didn’t humans once believe that above the sky there was an ocean, the boundary of heaven? But they weren’t blank. They had been, in days gone past. “You make bad jokes. That’s one change.”

“One change in ten thousand years is fine for geology, but not for people,” Nath said ruefully. Her own eyes were still the same as they had been in the war. The view in the mirror had not changed.

Whether Nath was right or wrong, she didn’t get far in her thoughts. Sora crossed the room in two quick strides, quietly and without warning; one moment she was clutching a plate of breakfast, and the next she was throwing her arms around Nath’s shoulders, pulling her into a clumsy embrace. She was strong, and warm, and closer than anybody had dared to come for thousands of years.

“Nath. We should be friends,” Sora said, with the certainty that runs through dreams. “We didn’t get to be friends during the war. That can be change number two.”

Something deep inside Nath was trembling. Wobbling, like a top that had been spinning for far, far too long, supporting itself through momentum and nothing more. The feeling was terrifying. The future was terrifying. But it was inevitable, and inevitably, she fell.

“I suppose that is acceptable,” she said, and buried her face in Sora’s hair. She didn’t want Hime to see her expression. This moment was private, for them alone.

The hug lasted half a minute more before Sora’s arms slackened, and she set Nath free to muster some dignity. She turned towards Hime and Suguri, bubbling with excitement. “Suguri, Suguri. It worked. I hugged her and we’re friends now. It’s like magic.”

“Ahahaha… Sora, please don’t take Suguri as an example of how to make friends. Her methods are unique, shall we say,” Hime replied, although the look on her face made it clear she would have it no other way. She caught Nath’s eye, and brushed her hand over her mouth: I shall say nothing, for now.

“Ahem. Well. I should probably go now. I have some errands to run,” Nath said, abruptly. She could feel the warm blood rushing to her cheeks. “We’ll meet again, Sora.”

“I still have your nose.”

“Keep it, for now. If I can get along without fingers, a missing nose should be fine,” Nath replied, rolling her eyes.

“We should meet at your house next time.”

“Although you’re more than welcome to visit us again,” Hime chimed in. “That said, it might be an idea to come later in the day next time. The house makes a little more sense in the afternoon.”

Nath shook her head, laughing. The idea that anything about this house could make sense seemed unlikely. Bookcase doors, breakfast acrobatics, green-eyed girls who didn’t say what they were thinking and left you to fill in the gaps. It was chaos, but a very peaceful kind of chaos. A smile played around her lips as she said, with what she realised was total honesty:

“I suppose I’ll get used to it.”

A/N: Nath didn’t use many contractions at first, huh? Obviously it’s character development that she uses more of them as time goes on. She’s getting comfortable with the people around her. It’s not that I entirely forgot about it. Not at all.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Awkward

Series: 100% OJ / Suguriverse Words: 2000 Characters: Sora, Nath Originally posted: March 29, 2017 (link here) A/N: This is where I first started messing around with the characterisations for Sora and Nath, and you can start to see the elements slotting into place. It’s also the point at which my little series becomes incompatible with canon, because in canon Nath is very dead. As a result, all the various Suguri series stories from here on out will have an AU tag. Also, Sora is a complete space cadet but I adore her.

Sora was not ‘lost’. That would imply that she, one of the finest soldiers of the greatest war ever known, did not have a sense of direction, which would be a very dangerous implication to make. She just didn’t know where she was, or where she was going. It was an entirely different thing.

Hime had sent her out with a list of things to pick up from town. She hadn’t specified which town, of course. Or even which country. Not that Sora could have told the countries apart, anyway. Things had changed since she had last explored the world, and she hadn’t had a great chance to take in the sights even then. She’d been too busy getting shot at. What Sora did know was that Hime was quite fed up with trying to eat scoops of ice cream out of a coffee cup, and wanted some cutlery. She also knew that Suguri could not be trusted to buy cutlery at all; the grey haired girl had been sent out twice earlier that week in search of proper tableware, and had come back with pockets full of things that were ‘close enough’, in her opinion. Evidently, Suguri had dangerous opinions, because in her world a fork was the same as a spoon and one-and-a-half castanets was dinnerware for the entire family.

Still, since Sora was absolutely Not Lost and had in fact never been lost in her entire life, she thought she might take some time to explore. She had at least found a town, which was a good start. It had knobbly, cobbled streets, the kind so old that they were out of fashion even before the war began, and the shops all had puns in the name – terrible puns, it had to be said. Sora felt like every shop owner had been given a Christmas cracker joke and been told to get on with it. Every few paces there was a wrought iron lamppost. It was oddly comforting.

She had just finished walking along the High Street (which was the lowest point in town) and turned onto Eastgate (probably east, definitely not a gate) when something in a shop window caught her eye. Sora had never been one for window shopping. She just moved to her objective, completed it, and repeated until she could return home. Part of her realised that it wasn’t actually her that did it; it was a mindset, brewed in the military. One more way that the war had followed her into the future. It would take time to break it, but she had time. More than enough.

She drifted along, wondering if the roll of notes Hime had given her would stretch to lunch. She’d already walked past five vendors hawking street food, and been tempted by every one; there was something about sizzling onions that called to her on a deep spiritual level. It amazed her that there was food from so many cultures, all collected in one place – it felt like the boundaries she had grown up with, the hate that existed between people, had loosened so much. Before, she could never have imagined being able to buy pad thai, falafel and paella within mere feet of each other.

“You look hungry,” a voice said from behind her left shoulder. Deep, feminine, but a little rough. One of the sellers, perhaps. “Sora.”

Not one of the sellers. Not somebody who should know her name. Her muscles tightened, her hands curled into fists of their own accord. She’d had her guard down, she realised. Been lulled into a sense of security by this peaceful place. She pivoted, eyes flashing, to face the speaker.

There was no weapon being pointed at her. No body armour in sight. No comforting hum from a personal shield. A non-combatant. With that established, the details began to pop out at her: a loose white peasant shirt reined in by a cropped navy jacket, the arms hanging empty by the sides. A skirt long enough to trail across the cobbled streets. Blue-grey hair, blue eyes. A familiar face.

“Nath,” she breathed.

“Oh? You recognise me. Unexpected. Ah. I’m not here to fight. I would show you my hands so you can see I don’t have a weapon, but… Well, that’s not a concern,” she said, and grinned almost sheepishly: the face of a woman who’d made a bad joke, and knew it. “Let’s have some tea. My treat.”

***

“I thought everything from the world before was gone.”

The tea room was very quaint. Hime would have loved it. Clotted cream, scones and red chequered tablecloths seemed to sprout from every surface. In the corner there was a great, leathery armchair with a night-table and a stack of thick books next to it. Every time the door opened – not constant, but often enough – a bell tinkled to announce the new arrival. Nath had ordered them a plate of biscuits, and a pot of tea; true to her word, she didn’t ask for any money.

“So did I. Bits and pieces turn up, from time to time,” Nath replied. “Could you pour?”

Sora nodded, and took the pot. Her hands didn’t tremble, although she was a little nervous.

“I didn’t die after our fight. That’s the silver lining, of being like me. They just… picked up what was left, and put me back together again. As easy as that,” Nath carried on, lightly. “A few little things went missing. They called me Humpty Dumpty for a while.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Sora raised an eyebrow. She’d never met somebody who could tell a joke and yet remain utterly, uncompromisingly serious. When Suguri or Hime told one, their eyes would light up, the corners of their mouths would twitch. You laughed, and then they would laugh, and everybody would smile. With Nath, it was like she was just going through the motions of a joke without really understanding what they were for. Like somebody had told her to do it one day, and she’d never stopped.

“…Are any of the others still around?” Sora asked. The question seemed to burn on the way through her throat, and when she finished, she could feel a strange, empty dread settle where it had been. Was she scared that nothing else had survived of the world she knew? Or scared that old enemies still remained to haunt her? She didn’t honestly know.

“Maybe. I hear rumours, now and again. I don’t follow up on them.”

A non-answer. It was enough, for now. Sora breathed deeply, let the smell of Earl Grey hit her airways. It was nothing like tea she used to see the soldiers drinking, the stuff they brewed overnight in tins and that was bitter enough to make you vomit if you drank it too fast.

“How are you going to drink that?” she asked, pointing towards Nath’s teacup.

“...You aren’t going to help me?” Nath asked, blinking. Absolutely serious.

A moment passed. “That… was a joke?” Sora tried.

“Yes. Watch.”

Nath seemed to close her eyes in concentration, and something moved in one of the long, billowy sleeves of her shirt. Sora realised then why the arms weren’t tied at the wrists, as they usually were for people lacking limbs; a bit quietly floated out of the cuff, and began to zip around the table.

“Old world technology. Still works, mostly,” Nath said, as the bit hovered around her teacup. It shot out a green ray that Sora immediately recognised as a tractor beam, one of the last big jumps of technology in the war. It was impressive that they had miniaturised it so far.

“You didn’t get prosthetics?”

“I did. But they wore out, and there were no parts to replace them. Some technology has come backwards after all this time. Not too many people get their arms blown off anymore, so the new stuff is a lot worse.” The teacup hovered level to her mouth, and she took a sip. “I heard you were dead, by the way.”

Sora said nothing. It wasn’t as though the assumption was necessarily wrong. If somebody stopped moving, you called them dead, didn’t you? She had just happened to wake up again, millennia later. An easy mistake to make.

“I was asleep,” she said, finally. “For years, and years.”

Nath’s eyebrow raised the slightest fraction of an inch, but she didn’t pursue the question. Instead she took a biscuit and began to nibble it daintily, as if showing off the control she had over her bits.“I wondered, you know. If I was the only one having difficulty adjusting. Have you noticed? In this world, even the serious people smile and joke all the time. I tell jokes, and nobody laughs. I can’t get used to it,” she said, looking away from Sora’s face. A troubled expression flickered through her eyes. “Do you ever feel that?”

Sora nodded. Hime never seemed to stop teasing; she was always ready with a quip and a dry smirk. Even Suguri, who rarely laughed outright, always seemed to be warm and approachable, a smile in her eyes if not on her face. It was difficult to talk to them, sometimes. The silence was too big.

“What were you doing before I stopped you, by the way?” Nath asked.

“Buying spoons,” Sora replied, without a hint of irony.

“...You slept for years on end, and then you wake up to buy spoons? How mysterious,” Nath said, and her mouth creased into a smile despite itself. “Look for Market Street, on the other side of town.”

“I see,” Sora said, and stood up. “Thank you for the tea. And the directions. I should proceed to the objective now.”

“Mm. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again. Maybe that’s for the better. But it was good to talk to you, Sora. I didn’t think I would ever get the chance.”

Sora looked at Nath, then; saw her rounded shoulders, the wistfulness creeping across her face. She wanted to say something, but the air was heavy, and she didn’t know the words. What would Hime do in this situation, she wondered? She pictured her new friend, the impish grin, the assured way she went about everything, and she was struck with an idea so stupid that she had to act on it before she thought about it too hard.

Leaving herself no time for doubts, she lunged across the table towards Nath and shot a hand towards her face. Nath flinched, but too slowly; Sora’s fingertips brushed against her cool skin.

“Nath,” Sora said, holding up her thumb. “I have your nose.”

“...what?”

Sora wiggled her thumb, tauntingly. “If you want it back, you have to come and find me.”

Nath looked at her, dumbfounded. Then, she coughed: a cough that rolled itself into a low chuckle that sprang from the very pit of her stomach.

“You must be the strangest ultimate weapon I’ve ever met,” she gasped, her eyes crinkled at the edges. “Very well. I’ll find you and reclaim my nose some other day.”

“I’ll make some tea for you when you do. I’ll use my new spoons,” the blonde girl replied, grinning. Then she turned on her heel and left, still holding her thumb above her head.

Nath didn’t reply. She was too busy chuckling to herself. What kind of world was she living in, where two women who’d tried their very best to kill each other could turn around and drink tea, and play childish jokes on each other? A better one than when they’d first met, she decided. Better by far.

“Excuse me… Are you alright?” one of the waitresses said, passing by. She was young, much shorter than Nath was. Not sure how to deal with this strange, armless woman, chuckling to herself in a tea-room.

“Ah… Don’t worry about me,” Nath replied, with mirth still ringing in her voice. “I’m quite ‘armless.”

The waitress looked at her for a moment -- then slowly, uncertainly, began to laugh.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Exercise

Series: 100% OJ / Suguriverse Words: 1153 Characters: Suguri, Sora, Hime Originally Posted: March 22, 2017 (link here) A/N: As a writer, I love slice of life and most of my writing is in that kind of genre. The disadvantage of this is that certain types of scenes never come up -- action scenes being a prime example. Occasionally, I like to set aside time to practice them, and this was an example of that. Also, you’ll see me refer to the series as ‘Suguriverse’ from here on out even if the main character is Sora, since the time period is actually Suguri’s.

The air was thick and still. They faced each other across an open field, blades of grass rigid with frost. No mud. Firm enough footing to lunge across the clearing in one shot. The battlefield was marked by posts strung together with rickety chain, chewed by age. Empty, but for them.

A training exercise, they called it. Physiotherapy. Stretching arms and legs that had slept for centuries, cajoling them back into fitness. It was Hime’s idea. Sora had shown no reaction, looked around with green eyes that were wide, and blank, like an animal’s. Her eyes were narrowed now, but calm. Waiting for a movement, a moment. A predator’s eyes – no, not a predator. A soldier’s. Suguri settled into a defensive stance. They’d decided on wooden swords, this time – they could take more punishment than that, but why tempt fate? The blade was longer than she was used to. Heavier. She wondered how well she’d fare with her short arms. She was hit with a sudden envy for Sora, for the extra few inches she had in height, the extra weight. Little differences like that could be decisive.

Sora moved. The slightest possible shift of her leading foot. The sound was tiny, but there; a feint. Suguri prided herself on her speed, but Sora was fast too. If the blonde haired girl decided to bridge the gap, she’d reach Suguri long before the sound did. Harder, too. Even heavy, sturdy swords like theirs would only last for a hit or two. Better make them count.

Stillness was difficult. Landbound fights were difficult. Suguri was used to the air, the freedom of motion. A 360 degree battlefield. On land, you couldn’t dip under or over somebody, or circle around to the back quicker than they could follow. It was oddly two dimensional. Her body ached for motion, for a release of tension; her muscles felt like coiled springs, straining under the weight of their energy. She pondered beginning her attack. Sora was heavier, stockier, more apt for defence. As a soldier, she’d probably play to her strengths and punish an ill-judged attack. But Suguri’s speed was nothing to be sniffed at. If she could surge forward, provoke the counter and then dodge, it’d be her victory without a doubt.

As if sensing her resolution, Sora launched forward. Blades of frosted grass flew at her feet, clods of mud blown clear by the power of the motion. For a fraction of a second, Suguri registered wide, shining green eyes, a nose crinkled into a snarl, before moving to the important things: Sora’s right arm, the sword in her hand, lifted up high for a vertical strike, left hand drawn across her chest for balance and protection. Too quick to dodge. Suguri braced, set her heels back and held her sword horizontally across her body, slightly slanted. Too straight and the sword would break, hard; she wanted the force to roll across the blade.

There was a flicker of motion, and Sora’s posture changed. It was like watching a video with frames of animation removed; one moment her arm was in the air, the next it was curled back at her shoulder, quivering with suppressed force. Her arm shot out like a cobra, into a thrust that shot under Suguri’s guard and bit the empty air above her shoulder. Suguri realised her mistake and tightened her grip on the sword, but too late. In a single, practised gesture, Sora’s right arm jerked back and sent the tip of Suguri’s sword careening into the empty air, her left hand shooting forward to catch her jacket near the neck as the silver-haired girl tried to pivot away from the attack. There was no time to even panic before Sora’s right hand cracked down again, once, twice, the butt of her sword pounding against Suguri’s head like a drum. The world exploded into stars and Suguri felt her knees give way, Sora’s grip at her neck loosening. She fell, and Sora’s knee was there to meet her when she did, a quick sharp stab at her stomach, as bad as a knife. It kept her upright for just long enough for the sword to crack down again, and this time she met the floor with a crash, her ribs aching, her head swimming. She saw Sora’s leg move, winding up for a kick, and tried to roll out of the way.

It wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t necessary. Before the kick could come, a black iron chain shot towards Sora’s other ankle and jerked her leg out under from her. She hit the ground face-first with a thump.

“That’s enough of that, I should think!” Hime said sharply, from her seat atop the rickety fence. “Goodness me. When I said you should practice your swordplay, I rather thought you’d be fencing rather than just hitting each other.”

Suguri groaned. She felt justified in groaning. She felt even more justified in asking Hime to be the judge of the contest. She had had a feeling something like this would happen. Sora looked at her, her green eyes blank and unassuming again. Her expression was absolutely nonplussed.

“That was how we did it… in my time. On land, at least. Knock them over, draw your gun and shoot them. They made us practice with shovels,” Sora said, climbing to her feet.

“…I’m glad I wasn’t on the opposite side to you,” Suguri replied.

“Yes, well. If you could perhaps not kill your friends out of force of habit, that would be nice. We shall just have to try something else, I suppose,” Hime said, sighing. “Was it good exercise, at least?”

“No. I just ran across a field and hit somebody,” Sora said.

“There’s such a thing as brutal honesty,” Suguri grumbled. She felt vaguely insulted, but couldn’t disagree with the assessment.

“Oh, cheer up. I’ll kiss it better later,” Hime teased, and ruffled her hair. Suguri rolled her eyes. “I suggest we retire for some cocoa and a brainstorming session.”

Suguri sighed, and made to follow her. Today had driven home that, rusty or not, Sora really was from a different era. A different world. The way she fought was more efficient, and brutal, than either Suguri or Hime could muster. What would have happened if Shifu had had somebody like Sora on his side, those many moons ago?

“Hey.”

Suguri felt a hand catch her sleeve. Sora’s hand. She turned to look at her newest friend, and found her face inscrutable as always. She always seemed so placid, like a cloud aimlessly floating across the horizon. If Suguri had to guess, though, she was probably going to make an apology for being so forceful.

Silently, tentatively, Sora put her hand on Suguri’s head and gently ruffled her silver hair. A contented, peaceful smile spread across her face. For the second time in as many minutes, Suguri sighed.

Close enough.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Game Master

Series: 100% OJ / QP Shooting Words: 2463 Characters: QP, Aru, Syura, Krila Originally posted: March 20th, 2017 (original here) A/N: A buddy asked me to expand an earlier drabble idea where the QP gang play D&D, and this was the result.

“QP, roll for diplomacy.”

A clatter of icosahedrons hit the table. There was enough table to hit. Despite her talents as a flying engine of death and sadness, QP had a laissez faire attitude to accuracy; usually she just fired wildly until whatever she was fighting strayed into her path, which would have been laughable if she didn’t output more bullets than a munitions factory. Thankfully, Syura had a dining table bigger than some train carriages, which meant QP hit more often than not.

As Syura totted up the roll and mangled the result with her formulae, Aru folded her arms across her chest. Aru did not, particularly, like role playing games. She hated pretending to be somebody she wasn’t. She hated pretending that she didn’t know things when she did. In short, she hated being reminded that she lived a double life already, and was never quite sure which half was the act – the half that was a cosmic holiday entity, or the half that had friends.

Still, the alternative had been letting QP and Krila brave Syura’s attentions alone. Krila had a beautiful, childish innocence that Aru found naturally endearing. QP had a set of legs that Syura had expressed designs on. Both of them needed to be protected, and the newly-minted Aru the Barbarian was just the bunny to do it.

Aru had only picked Barbarian because Syura assured her it was a simple class. It was, to a certain extent. QP had to worry about being a social maestro and casting the odd, intricately detailed spell or two; Aru, on the other hand, only had to worry about her thews, which were huge and glistening and entirely imaginary. Imaginary Aru was armed with a battleaxe that would no doubt have snapped Real Aru’s spine in half if she tried to lift it; real Aru, on the other hand, had armed herself with half a brick in a sock, a weapon revered by wizards the world over. Even Syura’s curiously dense skull would yield to the almighty brick-sock.

Unfortunately, even that hadn’t fully divested the pint-size poultry protector of her odd insistences, because shortly after everybody had picked their class, she had brought out a rail of cosplay equipment. QP – having wisely picked the class showing the least skin – was duly outfitted with a crown, a coronet and a carriage dress that left her looking like she’d strolled straight out of a history book. Aru? Aru got a faux fur tube top and a matching loincloth, because sartorial elegance was apparently a cross-class skill for a barbarian.

Syura, wrapped in the mysterious black cloak of a true game master, gave QP a prod. “Now you gotta make a persuasive speech, or the roll doesn’t count.”

“Dark Ninja Krilalaria! I, Princess QP, command you to do the stuff that the plot says I want you to do!” QP shouted. QP wasn’t particularly paying attention to the minutely detailed backstory that Syura had supplied, but she did enjoy shouting.

“And if I refuse, zam?” Krila replied, in a beautifully rendered stock villain voice.

“Then I won’t give you my melon bread at lunch tomorrow!”

“U-ugh… Servant of light, have mercy! To cast a famine on my people… You, bunny-eared barbarian! Have you nothing to say about this injustice?”

Aru nudged QP’s thigh under the table. “It does seem like we’re a lot more ruthless than the bad guys are.”

“That’s what being good is, Aru. You give evil an inch, they’ll take a mile. It’s better to scare them away from trying by making a few examples. That way, there’s less fighting and less bloodshed,” QP said, flashing a pointed look at Syura, who had doubtlessly been given more inches than she deserved. “Besides, the alternative is for you to chop them in half. That doesn’t seem nice, either.”

Aru, although she would never admit it, could have gotten behind a brief spell of chopping people in half. Syura had gone into great detail about how the blade of her battleaxe was made of high grade, tempered steel, inlaid with with runic prayers to the various totems of Aru’s imaginary people. But she had yet to chop so much as an apple with it. QP, it turned out, was a dangerously efficient problem solver, using a combination of natural wiles, real life leverage and a blunt ignorance of the rules that Aru didn’t entirely believe was genuine.

Krila turned to Syura with teary eyes. When Syura asked her if she’d help out by roleplaying some of the villains, she’d jumped at the chance – not yet realising that the side opposite QP was not the wisest place to be. Syura sighed.

“Fine, fine. Dark Ninja Krilalariat submits and leads you to the treasure room. QP, you gain 100 exp. Aru, you gain 75 because you didn’t do anything and you were out of character.”

“Pardon me? How was I out of character?” Aru asked, glowering.

“You’re a barbarian,” Syura said, and shrugged her shoulders. “Barbarians are supposed to be all ‘rawrg’ and ‘BLOOOOOD!’ and stuff. You were super reasonable.”

“Now you’re just being classist! What’s wrong with a thoughtful barbarian? Look at my wisdom score! I could dual class as a philosopher with a score like that!”

“I still can’t believe how high your attribute rolls were,” Syura pouted. “If I didn’t know you so well, I would almost believe that you were cheating.”

“Yes, well,” Aru retorted, folding her arms across her chest, “If you knew me a bit better, you’d know that I always keep a lucky rabbit’s foot on my person. Two of them, in fact.”

The atmosphere in the room became icy. Thankfully, Krila had no sense of mood. “Master of Dungeons, may I return to being the cleric of the beast god?”

“Fine.”

Krila jumped out of her chair and crawled underneath the table, reappearing a good fifteen seconds later in the chair next to Aru. She took off her hachimaki and replaced it with a cardboard pope hat, and seemed vaguely out of breath.

Syura leafed through her notes behind the screen, stopping once every so often to tut loudly. “Alright, the ninja leads the bossy princess and the world’s laziest barbarian through the caves of slaughter that I wrote three entire encounters for and into the cave of Sacred Ninja Treasure. Among the mountains of scattered gold coins and glistening gems, three treasures stand out: the Orb of Balance, needed to revive the Chicken Goddess, a beautiful tiara glistening with rubies, and an axe with the head carved into the likeness of a roaring tiger.”

“I want to lore check the tiara,” QP said immediately, narrowing her eyes.

“You’re a princess, not a bard.”

QP, sensing Syura’s reluctance, immediately pounced. “Which means I have nothing better to do than sit around all day reading musty tomes of ancient lore. Oh, and I have plenty to pick from, because I have free access to the Royal Archives. Lore check, please.”

“Make it an assisted lore check. As a barbarian, enchanted weapons and equipment are very relevant to my interests, and I have the intelligence score and smithing proficiency to back it up. QP, would you like me to roll?” Aru interjected.

“Please do, my faithful bunnyguard.”

Aru let fly her die, and watched as it bounced its way to a formidable natural 20. Syura also watched, although she seemed markedly less pleased by the result. Just as Krila saw playing the villain as an exalted position of responsibility, Syura had assumed the mantle of a fair and just game master, and refused to let it go. According to her, cheating would breach the sanctity of the game – despite the kind words in the manual encouraging her to fudge the occasional roll or two.

“Ugh. You reach deep into the caverns of your collective skulls and realise that it matches the description of a legendary artefact, said to imbue the wearer with all the skill of a different class.”

“And?” QP prompted.

Syura’s eyes narrowed. “‘And’ what? You got your lore check.”

“How many times have we played games together, Syura? How many cups of pudding have fallen under our deadly spoons? I know you, and I know you’re hiding something,” QP said imperiously. She turned to Aru, and began to apply puppy dog eyes. QP had a natural aptitude for puppy dog eyes. “Aru, may I ask you to try on this tiara?”

Aru clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I don’t know, QP. It might be dangerous, in more ways than one. Besides, I’m a big, macho barbarian, right? It’d take a lot to convince me to profane my mighty thews by wearing a tiara, especially if that tiara might remove said thews.”

Aru’s concerns were genuine, but there was another factor in the equation. Across the table, Syura was looking at her with desperate eyes, begging her to – just this once – take her side. It played across her conscience; Syura, despite having the authority, hadn’t cheated them for the entire game, whereas she and QP had combined forces to bend or ignore the vast majority of the rules.

“Very well. I am not an unreasonable princess, my dear bodyguard; I have heard your concerns, and I will offer you a grand banquet at the royal mansion when this adventure is over. I will also,” QP said, untying one of her many ribbons, “offer you your princess’s favour, to carry into battle with pride.”

Krila shot her hand up. “I, the cleric of the beast god, offer up my body in defence of our princess! I shall try on the tiara, and receive –”

“Krila, you don’t have to. You’ve already earned yourself a box lunch with two cups of pudding.”

“But,” Krila said, her one uncovered eye glistening with tears, “The game master didn’t put any treasure appropriate to my station in the cave.”

Syura felt the combined eyes of Aru and QP drilling into her skull. Very deliberately, she rolled a dice behind her screen. “Oh, look! Somebody just made a spot check!”

“How very convenient,” Aru murmured.

“The tiara is in fact dangling from a… uh… ebonwood staff of dark power, the likes of which have never been seen before! What mysterious spells could be hidden within?”

“I make a lore che–”

Aru clapped her hand across QP’s mouth, and quietly shook her head. “My goodness! Dark Cleric Krilalariat, it seems that your energies have revealed this magical staff, which nobody else could see. Surely you are the destined wielder of this staff.”

Krila was innocent to the extreme, but Aru would have been very surprised if she didn’t realise that her friends were trying to make it up to her. Her face settled into what, as near as it could muster, was a satisfied smile. QP, Syura, and Aru all looked at each other, having been drawn into a united front of Krila appeasement, and the mood of the room seemed to tend towards reconciliation.

“Alright. I’m going to try on the tiara. Not because I think it’s cursed, or a trap, but to show my loyalty to our princess. Also, I could use a class change. These stats are wasted on a barbarian, and this faux fur stuff itches like crazy,” Aru said. “Oh… But come to think of it, I beseech thee, my princess: when the royal banquet is thrown, I have two valued guests I would like to bring with me.”

“I, Princess QP, accept these terms.”

Syura sighed. Aru had offered her a compromise, and she knew it. “I understand. The barbarian Aru takes the tiara and places it on her head. In a blinding flash of light, she becomes smaller, more beautiful. She wears a headdress, and a long black dress covered by an apron; responding to the Princess’s wishes, the tiara has transmogrified Aru the Barbarian into an elegant maid.”

QP shook her head sadly. “Sorry, Aru,” she whispered. “I had a feeling she was going to do this.”

“It’s fine. I’m wearing a tube top and a loincloth, so anything is an upgrade,” the bunny shrugged. “Krila, can you find the maid outfit for me? I need to read up on my new class. It better still be able to use battleaxes.”

Aru stood up, and walked over to Syura to collect her character sheet. Casting her eyes around, she gave the diminutive girl a comforting pat on the head. 

“Sorry, Syura. I got you in on the banquet, at least.”

“You did.”

“Are you mad?”

“Not really. It’s hard to win against QP.”

“Hmm… This is…?! My eye! The eye of Krilalaris is reacting!” Krila shouted. Krila was not as good at shouting as QP was, but was by no means bad. “The fingerprints of the creator are inscribed upon this garment!”

“Krila… Sorry. I’m tired. Can you speak actual words and sounds for once?” Syura asked, wearily.

Krila jumped atop the table, brandishing the maid cosplay at Syura. “I serve the dark gods, but that servitude takes many forms! Behold, the insignia of this sealed eye!” She turned out the label with a flourish.

“‘Sealed Eye Cosplay Fashions’… Wait, is that you?!” Syura asked, her mouth agape.

“Ohohohoho! Do not think dollmaking is the extent of my power, human! You have my thanks, for you are ignorant of the true dark power of this clothing. For you, it is simply a maid outfit… for me, it was three weeks of relief from the dark hunger that consumes my soul. I feasted on the bread of life, and became stronger than I have ever been before! Ohohohoho!”

Syura blinked. She blinked again. And then, finally, she smiled. “I… see. What a small world. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to demonstrate those powers again for me? There are a few things I want to add to my cosplay rack…”

As Syura and Krila began to hammer out the details of a new and flourishing business relationship, Aru turned to QP. “Well, I think the adventure is over for today. I never got to actually use my battleaxe.”

“Yeah. I think you’ll make a great maid, though. I’ll be looking forward to next session,” the dog girl said. “I’ll braid your hair and tie it with the ribbon you earned, and you can bring me cups of pudding. It’ll be great.”

“Next time, hm? Well, I suppose I could go for one more.”

“Of course! Your princess commands it!”

“That only works in the game, you know.”

“Aww…”

Aru hadn’t used her battleaxe. But she hadn’t used her half-brick in a sock, either. She considered that a good day’s adventuring. She hoped that the next time would go just as well.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Slumber

Series: 100% Orange Juice / Suguri & Sora Words: Roughly 1130, apparently? Characters: Suguri, Hime, Sora Originally posted: March 13th, 2017 (original here) A/N: Sora’s my favourite. I love her. She’s such a good girl, right? Even her hyper has nothing to do with magic, or technology, or anything. She just tries her best for a turn. This was the first story to contain her, so there are moments of weird characterisation. 

An aching head. Heavy limbs. Too heavy. She can’t lift her feet. No strength. Words have colours. Sounds are more than sounds.

“...it can’t hurt.”

Strange words. A strange place. All she remembers is a blue sky. Endless. The black clouds were beneath her. Satisfaction. Her heart was beating fast.

“She did attack us for no reason…”

The world is soft, blurred at the edges. The sounds are soft. How long has it been since her heart beat like that? Yesterday, a thousand years ago. How many years since her eyes were open, since her ears could hear?

“She had reasons. We just don’t understand them. She’s one of this planet’s legends, Hime.”

“Well, I can’t deny her strength…”

The world is slowly drawing into focus. Her body is remembering. She is awake. Painfully, painfully awake. Covered by a duvet. So heavy. She remembers blankets being thinner, in her day. Not as luxurious. There was no luxury in the military. No choice.

“...She feels a little like you, Suguri. You, but broken.”

“It’s not surprising. My power was created to restore the planet she saved. We share a purpose. Probably a design, too.”

She rolls over, her arms trembling. She’s so hungry. So exhausted. Her throat is sore. How long was she asleep this time? A day, a week, a year?

“Ahahaha.” A laugh, like fingers across piano keys. “I suppose so. The resemblance really is striking. I don’t know what I shall do with two of you.”

“...You’re agreeing, then?”

“Oh, why not. The more the merrier. I would have preferred a puppy, but a girl is fine too.”

Footsteps, very quiet. A light rumbling, somewhere far away, gives way to a whistle. Not the long, sustained drone of a military alarm, but a wavering cry, almost like a strong wind. Sudden desire grips her; she wants to see the blue sky. She wants to fly again.

“I wonder, though… Is cocoa really going to be enough?”

“They built them tough back then.”

More footsteps. Padding, the clap of plastic soles on tiled floor, a compression of silk. It’s those things civilians wear at home. Slippers. That’s what they were called. Water pouring into a cup, a spoon clinking against ceramics. The sounds make sense. She remembers this.

“Is she awake?”

“Maybe. She strikes me as a heavy sleeper.”

“Hilarious, Suguri. Original, too.”

“I try.”

She tries to answer them. She’s not sure what she’s trying to say – something lucid, cogent perhaps – but it comes out as a long, rasping groan. She feels like she’s not had a drink in years. She realises that she’s right. The duvet lifts, and she faces an unfamiliar ceiling.

“Hello, Sora. We met yesterday,” Suguri says. Long, grey hair. Lithe body. The spitting image of herself. Apart from the eyes. Such focused eyes. “Here. Careful – it’s hot.”

The girl presses a warm mug to her lips. The smell of chocolate. Memories of childhood. She sips, and tastes only heat.

“What happened?” Her voice is a croak. She remembers a battle in the sky, her anger waxing hot. She had shouted a lot. Probably unwisely.

The girl smiles. Smiles. So rare, in the war. So full of wonder. “You overdid it. Flying around without eating or drink after so long was pushing it. Fighting us was too much.”

“I should say so. I still have the bruises. Blaming us for some snow clouds… There’s a limit to how audacious you can be, you know,” another voice says. It rings, like bells, clear and beautiful. The girl appears from the kitchen, and she remembers her from yesterday: blonde hair, wings of light, a phantom’s grace.

She tells them she’s sorry. Whatever half-words come out of her throat, her face carries the message. The blonde girl laughs again, not unkindly. “Well, it was an amusing diversion, so I can forgive it this time. My name is Hime, in case you forgot.”

“I’m Suguri. This is our home,” the grey-haired girl explains. Suguri. An important name.

“Be careful of this one,” Hime says, folding herself into a wicker chair a few feet away. “She collects blondes.”

“...A pervert?”

Suguri rolls her eyes. “One is not a collection. Hime likes to tease.”

It feels like an understatement. The war was full of them, things commanders said that soldiers had to translate. ‘Strong enemy presence’: a smaller war has broken out. ‘Some risk of injury’: you will almost certainly have less limbs at the day’s end. ‘We will provide long range support’: we’ll be coating the sky with missiles; please dodge them.

“Anyway… the world is different now. We don’t want you to feel lost. Or alone. We talked it over, and we’d like you to stay with us for a while. As long as you’d like,” Suguri says, and then adds, as an afterthought: “You can say no.”

“Although I, for one, would love it if you said yes,” Hime chimes in. “Suguri said you can have the beanbag, and I can come up and share the bed.”

Suguri’s eyes roll again; a quick flick skyward. “I’m installing a pillow wall, of course.”

Hime says nothing, but her eyes betray a sparkling grin. All walls must fall, in time.

“You’re… so lively,” Sora says. She takes another sip of cocoa, and tastes the chocolate this time. She almost feels like laughing. She hasn’t laughed in a long while.

“…Anyway, think it over. You can do what you like. We won’t order you around,” Suguri murmurs, and stands up. Her posture is a little rigid. Restrained.

“Wait.”

For all her strength – for all that they called her the ‘ultimate weapon’ – the most Sora can manage is to catch Suguri’s sleeve.

“…The war is over. The world is safe. What am I to do?”

Suguri turns, and her motion is quicker, more fluid; it’s as though a dam has broken. Before she can protest, Sora finds herself being folded into a hug.

“I can’t answer that,” Suguri says, her fingers drifting through the tangle of Sora’s hair. “It isn’t my answer to give. Just live. Look around this peaceful planet. You’ll find something. I promise.”

Sora doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes. No, she thinks. Despite their looks, despite their power, the difference between her and Suguri is like night and day. She was a soldier. She could never hug somebody like Suguri can. She doesn’t have that kind of strength.

The world begins to blur at the edges, warm and comfortable, and she feels sleep stealing into her, filling the hollowness of her bones. She’s never slept on a beanbag before. Probably better than the bunks she’s used to.

With that thought on her mind, wrapped in a friend’s embrace, she begins her first dream in a wide and warless world.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Lazy Sunday

Series: 100% OJ / Suguri Words: 1510 Characters: Suguri, Hime Originally Posted: March 6th, 2017 (original here) A/N: Another SugiHime story. This one was a bit self-indulgent, because it basically started with a tangent that I really didn’t want to let go of, and eventually just tagged a story onto the end of it. I love tangents, but usually try to be a little more restrained nowadays. Still fun as heck, though.

It was a lazy Sunday. Well, it would have been. It was a curious phenomenon; before Suguri met Hime, every Sunday was a lazy Sunday. It was the only flavour of Sunday available. You could perhaps make a call to the manager of the Sunday store and ask her to stock new and innovative varieties of Sunday, and she would simply push up her metaphorical glasses and say, “Our consumer data says that Lazy Sundays are the best selling Sunday by far. Do you know how many Lazy Sundays are being consumed worldwide? In fact, we have a 100% takeup rate. Why would we stock anything else, given that everybody loves Lazy Sundays so much?”

Well, you would say, Lazy Sundays are very nice and nobody is denying that, but a change is as good as a rest, isn’t it? There’s nothing wrong with trying just a little something new every once in a while to see if you like it. The store manager would look at you, check the data on her phone (which looks suspiciously not like actual data and more like a candy-based puzzle game) and say, “Sorry, but it just wouldn’t be profitable for us. If you want Sundays, you’ll just have to abide by the ones we have, or check with one of our competitors. By the way, the only ones we have are lazy ones, and our competitors don’t exist.”

So, defeated, you would slink back to your bed for an enforced lie-in of at least two hours, followed by shuffling about to make an easy breakfast so you could count as being awake at noon. It was the only choice.

Until, of course, Hime appeared. Hime had taken the world of Sunday selling by storm, mainly because she was from Space, and Space’s idea of a Sunday was very different. Mainly it didn’t exist, because having seven days of the week when you weren’t on a chunk of rock hurtling through space around the day’s namesake seemed a little silly.

In the end, Hime had bravely purged any and all traces of the insidious Lazy Sunday from Suguri’s home, because Lazy Sundays bored her and there were few things as dangerous as Hime when she was bored. It brought out her impish streak, which was a mile wide and twice as long, with every step being a new and embarrassing hazard for anybody trying to walk the path. She was a master at unexpected teasing, a 2nd Dan at dry retorts, an unrelenting agent of whimsy that spread her missive of mischief as far as her arms would allow.

In short, Hime had not sat in the core of a spaceship for 10,000 years so she could be bored and sleep in all day. She did, at least, come fully furnished with helpful suggestions for things that would entertain her and keep everybody within an arm’s reach of their sanity.

“Suguri, let’s go visit Saki today.”

Suguri sucked the top of her pen. She was valiantly wrestling with the crossword puzzle, which she knew from experience was harder than wrestling a polar bear. There were things printed words on a sheet of tree pulp could do to your brain that even half a ton of raw ursine muscle and carnivorous intent couldn’t.

“I do enjoy Saki’s company,” she murmured, in between scrawling “apotheosis” into the little box with her childish, loopy handwriting.

“Of course you do. She’s blonde, homeless, and hilariously dangerous. You have a track record with that kind of girl, you know,” Hime said. Hime was currently draped across the loveseat, her head lolling over the arm, looking at Suguri upside down. Her hair was hanging down; her forehead was formidable.

“One girl does not constitute a track record. Ooh, constitute. I think that fits. Anyway, even if I enjoyed myself, what would you do?”

“Gossip about old times, braid each other’s hair, debase myself for baked goods. It has all the makings of a fun afternoon!”

Suguri sighed, and shut her newspaper. It was a reluctant admission of defeat; even her smallest, squigliest handwriting had not managed to compress ‘recalcitrant’ into a space meant for four letters. “Yes, well. Last I heard, Saki was in Brazil. Even with our speed, we’d struggle to fly to Brazil in less than twelve hours.”

Hime pouted. Or perhaps not. Hime was very good at pouting without actually pouting. She would imply a pout, and that made them all the more effective because she could still retain the appearance of being refined and sanguine while being childish. “Oh, boo. I know! Let’s hire out a rowboat. We can enjoy a day on the water. Me, you, the sunshine, dragonflies, reeds, lilypads, krakens...”

Aside from the fact that Hime didn’t seem to know if she wanted to sail down the River Nile or straight down into the cold, pressurised depths of the ocean, Suguri had some private objections to that plan. Firstly, she thought Hime had spent enough time on boats. A spaceship, according to Suguri, was just a boat that happened to be in space. According to Hime, it was a ship, because a boat had to have oars, and could you imagine trying to paddle to Neptune? Neither one of them was correct, but both of them were very passionate about it.

Secondly, Suguri had recently brought home a bookshelf. (She didn’t know quite how she’d done it. She acquired furniture the same way that people acquired lost puppies; it just sort’ve appeared at her ankles one day and she picked it up and fussed it and gave it a loving home). She had donated it to Hime, and kept a semi-close eye on the contents. In the last two weeks, it had accrued a number of books about pirates, and Suguri thought that Hime might not be able to resist an opportunity to swash some buckles.

“Why don’t you take a look at your unfinished knitting projects?” Suguri asked, jerking her head towards the corner. The corner was dominated by a sprawling jungle of worsted spread, in a variety of beautiful pastel colours. Last time Suguri had checked, Hime had been working on a shapeless bundle of cloth that she described as ‘a scarf, but it’s a very postmodern kind of scarf.’

Hime winced. “Aha. I think I’ll leave that for today. One day, I shall have needlework that strikes wonder into the hearts of the gods themselves, but I have thousands of years to attain that skill, so I needn’t be in a hurry.”

Suguri smiled to herself. She had knit, on and off, for a stretch of fifty years in her ten thousand year life, but Hime was adamant about learning to do it herself. The next time Hime went to stay with Kyoko, Saki or Iru, Suguri fully intended to knit her a nice sweater to see the reaction. (Suguri had also, in her past, spent a long time wrangling various ‘postmodern’ knitted garments back into wearable shape, with questionable success.)

“Hah… That still doesn’t solve the problem of what to do. Suguri, do you mind if I spoon feed you three tubs of chocolate fudge ice cream? I feel like that will bring us both closer to enlightenment.”

In Suguri’s opinion, the only thing eating three tubs of ice cream in a row would enlighten her of was her lunch. She took the suggestion as the warning shot that it was. It was time to unveil her secret weapon.

“Hime, how much do you like loud noises?”

“I’m not really a huge fan,” Hime said, conveniently forgetting that she was sometimes a steady source of loud noises.

“Okay. How much do you like Kae?”

“I feel like you just asked the same question twice but in different ways. Oh well. I suppose it depends on how you serve her – rare, medium or well done?”

“Anything less than well done wouldn’t even singe that one. Anyway, she recently made some friends who are also loud and have guitars, and sent us some free tickets.”

“Free tickets! Those are the best kind,” Hime replied wryly. “Oh, but what shall I wear? My wardrobe is rather light on ripped t-shirts and spiked collars, although that could be addressed. Will we need to daub ourselves with eyeliner and draw stars on our faces, do you think?”

With that, Hime launched herself from the loveseat, pleased with the itenerary of the day. It was a fine one. There would be loud noises and moshing, which, in Hime’s understanding, was like dancing except it incorporated violence, and thus was a fusion of two things she was rather good at. There would also be Kae, who would most likely be louder than the band, but always a source of fun. Suguri watched her go, pleased with her work. Although crossword mastery still eluded her, Hime was happy and not sowing gentle chaos in the surrounding area, which was victory enough. Unlike Hime, though, Suguri knew exactly what she would be wearing to Kae’s concert.

Earplugs.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] The Space Between

Series: 100% OJ / QP Shooting Words: 1000 Characters: QP, Syura Originally Posted: March 3rd, 2017 (original here) A/N: While tumblr posts and their blogspot originals are usually equivalent, this is one that I would say to read on the toombles. Unfortunately, blogspot’s infrastructure has a few goofs in it, and the font screwed up in a way I probably can’t fix without binning the post and typing it out again by hand. So instead, have this one. The original theme was that QP, upon triggering her pudding ascension, was going through a period of changes, leading to a temporary estrangement from her friend.

She grimaces, rolls a token between her forefinger and thumb. They’re surrounded, hemmed in by a wall of noise. Pennies fall through slots to be fired pneumatically and land atop an ever increasing tide of bronze, carrying prizes that will never fall. Slot machines vie for attention with harsh, manufactured noise. Somewhere there is the thump, thump, thump of a heavy footed dancer attacking the pad. A roiling, messy soundscape.

“I don’t get it.”

QP ignores her. As usual. QP has such a lot going on. She came back the other day having ‘saved pudding’, and has barely glanced at anybody since. What was lost during that time, Syura wonders? What had put such distance between them?

Even here in the arcade, Syura’s home turf, she doesn’t blink. The noise doesn’t affect her. She just plays, like Syura asked her to. Mechanical, efficient movements. A mind far from here.

“QP. I don’t get it.”

“You just dodge. Dodge and shoot. There isn’t anything else,” is QP’s reply. Her spaceship darts around the screen, weaving between walls of bullets. Syura lost all her credits on stage 3. This is stage 5.

“Not that. You. I don’t get you.”

For just a moment, QP’s expression softens. She looks uncertain. Troubled. But it’s only a second, a misstep in the march of time. The distance returns to fill the space.

“You don’t react anymore,” Syura says. Her voice is accusing, too accusing. She wants to take the words back and put them together better. Too late now. “You hate the arcade. You have sensitive ears, and the noise makes them hurt. All the flashing lights make it hard to focus. That was what you said before. Every single time.”

QP says nothing. Syura looks at the stains on the floor, the flickering lights, the gum stuck on the cabinets. Anywhere but her friend’s face.

“Syura… Listen,” QP says. Hesitant. Unsure. A stray bullet collides with her, but she ignores it. “I’ve been going through some changes lately.”

“Changes?” Syura scoffs. “It’s like you’re a different person. Like I barely know you.”

“I… got a job. A really important one. There’s so much to get used to, Syura. It’s taking up so much of my brain. So much of me.”

“So you’re putting your job before your friends? I didn’t think you were that sort of person.” The words are bare, tree branches in winter. Nothing can grow from words like that.

“It’s not my choice. It won’t be forever, okay? Just until I get used to it all.”

Syura says nothing, lets the sound of machines fill the gap between then. Inside, she’s panicking. It feels so serious. So unlike their other fights. If it won’t be forever, why does it feel so permanent? They’re standing right next to each other, but so far away.

“I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. You’re meant to be the straight-forward one. The happy one. Why are you like this?”

QP turns to her, and the pale-blue glare of the arcade cabinet bathes her features in an unreal light. “I don’t know, Syura. It isn’t your fault. It’s… It’s not like I hate you, okay? It’s nothing like that.”

Syura bites her lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. When did QP’s shoulders get so rounded, so hunched? When was her tail so listless, her eyes so red? Words are bubbling inside her. Too many words, all at the same time. How do you tell somebody you love them and you hate them at the same time?

“I… I’m not accepting this, okay? I don’t care what your job is. You can’t get rid of me just like that. It’s not alright.” Syura’s fists, balled at her sides, are shaking. She struggles to hold in hot, angry tears. “Keep playing that dumb game, QP. But when you get to school tomorrow, I’m gonna… I’m gonna beat you up. If I lose, I’ll beat you up the next day. I’ll fight you, and I’ll fight you, and I’ll fight you, until one day I knock some sense into your thick head and you get back to normal. You got that?!”

She turns tail and flees. It makes her look like a child, but anything is better than letting QP see her face right now. QP watches her go; her hand stretches out as if to catch her, but her legs don’t move. She feels a growl building deep in her chest, a reckless anger.

“Sweet Breaker.”

She appears, or perhaps she was always there, her long hair falling down her back, a sympathetic frown on her face. Her voice is quiet, but cuts through the noise of the arcade like a blade.

“Becoming a god is difficult, QP. I know.”

QP takes a step, two. Dangerously close. “I don’t want this. You took away the thing I loved, and I took it back. Now everything is a mess.”

“If I hadn’t, pudding would have caused a catastrophe. I didn’t have any choice. Just like you have no choice,” Sweet Breaker replies. Her voice is not unkind. “It’ll be over in two weeks, a month. Maybe sooner.”

QP feels the growl building it, fights it down. “I hope you’re right. This isn’t fair to her. Or me.”

“She’s a good friend. She’ll wait,” Sweet Breaker says, and her voice is wistful. “I had a few like that. They don’t last forever, you know. You should make it up to her.”

She turns, takes a step behind one of the cabinets, and is gone: consumed by the lights, the noise. Only the memory of her lingers, melting like chocolate on the tongue. QP groans, surrounded and at the same time very alone. She rolls a token between her fingers, like Syura always does, before slotting it into the machine. She’ll need the practice. Two weeks, a month. Maybe less. Her hands move mechanically. Efficient. Her focus is almost divine. But yet… but yet…

Her ears hurt.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] The Fanservice Episode, Frankly

Series: 100% OJ / Suguri Words: 3855 Characters: Suguri, Hime, Kae, Nanako Originally posted: February 27, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: I remember being proud of this when I wrote it; I’m usually better at short stuff, to the extent that longer chapters sap my energy a lot. (A little better at it nowadays, I guess...) Of course, nobody read it. I took the title from a Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid episode. Somewhat risque, and with a hurried ending.

Suguri was not, particularly, a fan of the ocean. The raw power of her body was enough to dissuade concerns about breathing, and even the thousands of atmospheres worth of pressure to a certain extent, but she was all too aware that in the Great War, humanity had been rather more focused on how to litter the sea with mines than with how to get them back out again. Even with her abilities, clean up had been a long, dangerous process, and more still might be lurking in the dark, unknown pockets of the deep. There was no way to know. As a result, she wasn't quite as enthused by the idea of a summer beach trip as Hime had been. There were upsides, of course. The sea breeze was one of Suguri's favourite things; part of her believed that she had been a seagull in her past life. She was also partial to the building and subsequent destruction of elaborate sandcastles, to symbolise the artifices of man returning to the bosom of the ocean. There was, however, an additional factor in Suguri's decision to attend the beach day, although she had every intention of denying it when it inevitably came up. A week prior she had spotted Hime sneaking into the house in the earlier hours, armed with a two-piece bikini that was a shade below scandalous but still firmly in the daring category. She hadn't been able to get a good look at it, but she was fairly sure it was frilly, and a Hime with frills was relevant to her interests to say the least. Also relevant to Suguri's interests, in no particular order, were: Hime running barefoot along the sands and giggling; Hime standing waist-deep in the ocean with sunlit golden hair and her beautiful wings reflected against the rolling waves; and hitting watermelons with sticks. (Some pleasures were too simple to be denied). Upon reaching the beach, the pair had retired to the changing rooms, and Suguri had shrugged on her own swimsuit. It wasn't too flattering, although it wasn't as though she had much to flatter; Suguri was built for speed, with lean, defined muscles in her shoulders and her back. Her long hair did, however, mean she could get away with a halter top without anybody staring too much, and all she needed after that was a pair of shorts. Shorts, mercifully, were easy to shop for; usually, shopping for swimwear ranked at number six in the top ten list of Suguri's Biggest Waking Nightmares. She just had very defined tastes, and nobody seemed to appreciate grey swimsuits with a single stripe on them as much as she did. Having changed much faster than Hime (as usual), Suguri looked out at the fine, pale sands and resolved that before the day was over, she would achieve her life's ambition of making a sand castle that she could fit inside. But the day was long, and she was fast; there would be time for castle-building later. Now was the time of garishly striped towels and beach umbrellas that consistently threatened to fall over, and she wasted no time in installing hers in the middle of the beach. By the time the others arrived, Suguri had already acquired flip flops, novelty sunglasses and the beginnings of a tan, and was busy lying face down on her beach towel like a fried egg with a grey, fluffy yolk. “Hey, shortie. You didn't bring your luggage with you?” Suguri tilted her head upwards and saw Nanako, who was hefting a beach bag almost as big as she was. As always, she seemed a touch bitter; Suguri sometimes had problems getting along with her, although Hime was of the opinion that Nana just enjoyed grousing as a way to vent stress, “Ah, you've arrived. If by 'luggage' you meant Hime, she's still changing,” Suguri replied peacefully, looking Nana up and down. The diminutive soldier had gone for a violet one-piece that was more cute than it was dignified, although Suguri guessed that there weren't that many alluring outfits available for somebody of Nanako's size. Some impish part of her decided to push that button a little. “...I was sure you'd be wearing a school swimsuit, though.” “I don't care what you idiots say. I'm not in ninth grade! I am a professional soldier with a number of completed campaigns –” “And a record of losing to me in sword fights.” “– and a record of losing to you in sword fights because you cheat by having such long arms –” “I can't control how long my arms are.” “I can't control how tall I am! I looked everywhere for a nice, mature-looking swimsuit but I got landed with this frilly, cutesy mess while Kae, Kae looks like she's trying to dam the Victoria Falls with a picket fence, just spilling out everywhere and argh!” Nanako threw herself on the sand in frustration, before rolling over and affixing Suguri with a dangerous, steely glare. “You and me, we should form an alliance. Did you know that being short used to make you a sex symbol? It's true! I dug out some old music from before that stupid war you guys had, and all they ever sing about is shorties. 'Shortie, you so hot! Shortie, get low! Shortie got me spending the benjamins!' All stuff like that. We could rule together.” Suguri arranged her face into a peaceful, innocent smile. “I'll form an alliance with you. But you have to accept me as the leader.” “...What would your first order be?” Nanako asked, eyes narrowing. “To go and explain to Kae why, in detail, you've been staring at her chest for long enough to construct similes about it.” “Tch. No dice,” the girl said, and rolled over to face the other way. “I hate arguing with you. It always makes me so tired. I just wanna sit down and relax afterwards.” Suguri sighed, and very gently patted Nanako on the head, expecting her to jerk her head away at any moment. Her hair was surprisingly soft and healthy; evidently she took good care of it. “...Your swimsuit doesn't look awful. Tell me where you got it next time,” Nana said after a while. “Yes, yes.” Perhaps, in an alternative world, the moment would have continued. The sounds of the waves against the shores, of seagulls chattering overhead, would have lulled Nanako into an easy sleep. She would have awoken hours later, sunburnt on the side of her that was peeking out from Suguri's lopsided beach umbrella, and her absolute incandescent rage would have been mollified by memories of Suguri gently fussing with her hair. Alas, this would have had to been an alternative world where Kae did not exist and was not the greatest source of noise on the beach. She charged along, a beach umbrella under one arm, kicking up a stream of flying sand with her footsteps, yelling at the top of her voice – and the top of her voice was taller than some mountains. Suguri took a glance in her direction and immediately regretted it; Nanako had not been joking when she talked about spillage. She looked just long enough to feel vaguely jealous before turning away, which was just as well, because the next thing Kae did was launch herself through the air in a beautiful parabolic arc toward their location. She hit with the force of a small explosive, planting her beach umbrella into the ground like a sword and distributing a fine layer of sand over the face and body of every person in a 100 metre radius. “Safe!” the redhead yelled, flashing a peace signal to her two friends. Suguri, drawing on over 10,000 years of life experience, had wisely made the decision to close her eyes and mouth. Nanako had not, and was in the delicate process of trying to make death threats while excavating roughly a tenth of the beach from her lungs. She was having little success with either, but this made no difference to Kae, who had already thrown herself at Suguri for a full-body hug. After a relatively minor but confusing scuffle, they came to a rest with Kae's warm cheek pressed gently against Suguri's navel. “Ahahahaha! It's been so long since I saw you, Sugi! What are you doing lying around? You should be playing volleyball! Summer is all about friendly competition!” Suguri had come to two conclusions, neither of which was about volleyball. The first was that Kae was part puppy, and had to express that by nuzzling people to death. The second was that Kae's swimsuit had more in common with a coat of paint on a car than with an actual piece of fabric designed for human beings. Bravely extricating herself from Kae's embrace, Suguri put on her responsible adult voice. “Ah... I think if we played volleyball, one of us would have a malfunction.” Kae gave a thumbs up. She often gestured as she spoke, with enough ferocity to put any angry waiter to shame. “Don't worry, don't worry! This body was built to last!” “I'll play volleyball with you, Kae,” Nanako seethed, her eyes flashing pure murderous intent. “But I get to use my bits as well, since you're so tall, and, and, buxom. And if I win, you have to be quiet for one hour for every point I won by.” “Uuuu... That doesn't seem fair. But I don't ever see Nana this fired up. What to do...? Aha! I know! If I win, I get to dress Nana up however I want for the rest of the day!” Both girls looked at Suguri, who sighed and nodded. “Alright. I've witnessed the conditions of the bet. Play fair, you two. Or mostly fair, anyway.” Almost before she had finished speaking the two were away, trading verbal jabs and actual lasers with impunity. Suguri watched them become dots in the sky, and wondered how exactly they intended to play volleyball without a net. It didn't matter, she supposed; Nanako was spoiling for a fight more than anything, and Kae would be more than willing to give her one. “Oh, my. Are those two at it already? I don't know if they get along badly or a bit too well,” a voice remarked from behind Suguri's shoulder. It was warm, cheerful, as clear as song. Hime. “I'm also disappointed in you, Suguri. I look away for mere moments and another woman has captured your belly-button for herself.” Suguri tilted her head back to take a long, upside-down look at Hime and her swimsuit. There were ruffles. There was a black and gold high neck bikini top and a black sarong cut just low enough to show the delicate lines leading down from the hips. There was a dry smile on Hime's face which probably meant Suguri was being a little too obvious. “Aha. Well, you were changing for quite a while,” she said, clearing her throat. “True enough. No matter. I shall just have to win back your heart with delicious ice cream,” Hime replied, leaning down to hand Suguri a scoop. Had she been carrying ice cream cones, Suguri wondered? Her eyes had definitely been elsewhere. “It's a shame that Saki, Iru and Kyoko couldn't make it.” “Mm,” Suguri nodded. Especially since those three were generally much less erratic than Nanako and Kae were. “Well, I was more worried about Nana and Kae in the first place. The others have spread out a little and started to explore, but I don't think those two have found what they really want from this planet yet...” Suguri frowned. This was one of those moments that seemed to demand a sensitive, emotional response, and she didn't have one ready. The words always seemed to elude her, as surely as she eluded bullets and lasers. “We can take care of them for a while longer,” she replied. It wasn't quite the response she had wanted to give, but it was the one she had to settle for. “I suppose I should stop being a mother hen. Speaking of, are you wearing sunscreen?” “Was that why you took so long changing? You were putting on sunscreen?” “Very good! Gold star for Suguri,” Hime said with a grin, and sat down beside her on the sand. “My skin is so pale from being in the spaceship all those years that I have to be careful with it. You didn't answer my question, though.” “I don't really need it. My skin never tans or burns. And I have no intention of leaving this umbrella, anyway.” “Oh, that's ridiculous. I'm sure you'll want to play in the sun at some point. Here, roll over and I'll do your back for you,” Hime said, with an expression of perfect innocence that guaranteed she was up to something. “Don't worry. I can do it myself.” “Oh my, how impressive. How flexible and dexterous you must be!” Hime replied, with a gleam in her eye. “Incidentally, how good are you at rope escape?” Suguri sighed. The answer, of course, was 'not good enough to get out of Binding Chains'. She grunted and rolled over in deference to Hime's passionate advocacy of responsible skincare. With a satisfied giggle, Hime scooted across and sat on her. “Hime? You're sitting on my butt.” “Yes, I'm quite aware.” “Is there any reason?” “You sit on it all the time. It seemed the obvious place.” The logic was flawless, and Suguri couldn't refute it. Instead, she just closed her eyes and appreciated the breeze rolling in from the sea. Hime, meanwhile, busied herself with scooping up armfuls of long, silver hair and moving it away from Suguri's back. “Ooh. Nice definition,” Hime murmured as she began to work damp fingertips around the muscles of Suguri's shoulders. Suguri said nothing, and was trying very hard to think nothing as well; for all her efforts to approximate a plank of wood, she wasn't having much luck. She tried closing her eyes and allowing the sound of the waves to fill her mind. “Hey.” Suguri was surprised to hear her own voice. She hadn't particularly planned to say anything. “Mm?” “Why is this so important to you?” Hime tilted her head a little in thought, but her hands continued to insinuate themselves against Suguri's muscles like the ocean licking at the sands. “Oh, well. A few reasons. It's part of the beach experience, I suppose, to rub sunscreen on somebody's back. Spaceships, in general, are not equipped with beach facilities, and water is a precious resource. We never got sun tans. We never wore swimsuits. Hm... How do I put it? For you, Suguri, this might not be a special occasion, but for me, and for Kae and Nanako as well, it has the taste of a kind of life we were never allowed by circumstance to lead.” “I see.” The sound of the waves seemed to blend with the words and give them a strange, mystical texture. Hime's hands crept down the plains of her back and then returned to her shoulders, in a long, sinuous pattern. “Another reason is that you've been so patient with us, Suguri, and with me in particular. To have had you here to welcome us to this strange, wide-open world has meant more than I can say. Sometimes I just want to spoil you a little in return. This doesn't feel bad, right?” The only response Suguri could conjure was a non-committal but vaguely embarrassed little sound from the back of her throat; Hime met it with a sparkling laugh. “Of course, that's a third reason. You're quite fun to tease, Suguri. You're so very serious all the time, and you always try not to react but do anyway.” “And is that why you tease me so much?” Hime took a moment to to coat her hands with a little more lotion. “Would you prefer a short and fun answer, or a long and serious one?” “Well,” Suguri replied dryly, “Since I'm such a serious person, I'll take the serious answer.” “I thought as much.” Hime's hands had drifted as low as Suguri's waist; her movements were slower, lingering, and her words matched. “I've lived for ten thousand years, Suguri. You know how long that is. But for the vast majority of that time, I've lived in the same, tiny place. The same days, the same faces, endlessly repeating. Oh, Suguri. I used to look at those travellers who we brought to Earth, and I could take apart their faces and say what belonged to their great, great grandfathers, where the family trees had crossed, that kind of thing. In a restricted pool like that, there are only so many genes you can have, you know? Only so many faces, so many combinations.” Suguri said nothing. If there was one thing she was good at, it was that. “Well, at any rate, if you live for too long like that, time starts to... blend together, just a touch. More than a touch. For a long, long while, it felt like I was living the same day over and over. Like time had stopped, for me. Just for me. But then we saw Earth on our horizons, with that horrible man at the helm. The only reason I didn't stop him earlier was because I assumed he would die of old age before he got the chance to do any real damage, but... Anyway. Things started moving again. Now every day is different. There are so many people to meet, with so many faces I've never seen or dreamt of before. This world, this Earth of yours, is constantly spinning. In motion. I feel like that's so important.” “It's your Earth, too. Mm. That feels nice.” Hime was tracing circles with her thumbs across the edges of Suguri's hips; she gave a satisfied little sigh and applied herself to the task with more gusto. “I suppose it is, at that. But, Suguri. Sometimes when I look at you, I feel... I feel like your time stopped somewhere on the way, too. Some days you wake up, and you wear the same face all day. It's... Well, I don't think it's good to do that. And anyway, I'm childish and selfish. I want to see all the different faces you can make, Suguri, not just the one you use all the time. That's why I tease you from time to time. To stop the moments from blending. I'm hoping that one day, I won't even have to tease you; you'll just wake up and smile, and blush, and laugh by yourself instead of keeping that same face.” “And what will you do then?” Suguri asked. Her voice was sleepy. Her body was sleepy. She felt like she was talking in a dream. “Well... I'll probably keep teasing you. But perhaps I won't be joking about it. Your back is done, by the way,” Hime replied, and stood up. “Of course, I could always do your front for you, if you'd like.” Suguri didn't need to look to know that Hime was wearing a devious grin. But she stood up and looked anyway. After all the talk of keeping the same face, she realised that perhaps she hadn't been paying enough attention to Hime's. “If I said yes, would you do it?” Hime blinked, and for a moment a flash of colour spread into her pale cheeks; but it was just for a moment. “You could always take your chances and find out.” “I'll pass.” “Oh, boo. It's rude to raise a lady's hopes and then dash them.” Suguri found, as she had always found, that there were moments in life when it was necessary to trust one's body over one's brain. Decisions could not always be taken with a full set of information on which to base rationale, and anyway, there were sometimes sensations that the brain filtered out of conscious experience but still registered on a smaller level, and those could be as indicative of oncoming danger as any larger portents. She couldn't quite tell what prompted her to move as she did, but in that moment she was absolutely sure that the correct course of action was to launch herself towards Hime, scoop up her friend in her arms, and clear the next six feet of ground as soon as possible. She had cleared the first three feet when Kae and Nanako barrelled out of an empty sky at a speed that beggared belief and crashed into the beach, sending a plume of sand skyward. “One, two, three, four, I win the THUUUMB WAAAAAR!” Kae howled, lifting Nanako into the air by one arm like a referee lifting a boxer's arm in victory. “Hey, hey, Big Sis Hime! Do you think Nana would look better as a punk rocker, or with cat ears?” “Go with whatever your heart tells you, Kae,” Hime said indulgently. “But remember: when it comes to cat ears, proper etiquette demands a tail as well.” Nana, although her eyes were more inclined to look in different directions to one another in that moment in time, still had the wherewithal to look at Hime lounging in Suguri's arms and ask, in a very groggy voice, “Am we... Was I... Is we... Inter'pting somethink?” “Oh, nothing that we can't continue later,” Hime said with a wink, climbing down. “She means 'no, nothing',” Suguri deadpanned. “I don't suppose you two would like to put the beach back where it belongs?” “Nope!” Kae said proudly, conspicuously not looking at giant crater she had left. Suguri sighed. “I suppose we'll pick a different beach next year. It's about time to split the watermelon. Would you go and fetch it?” Kae had vanished before the sentence was finished. Hitting things with sticks was very much a Kae thing, and she dragged Nanako along in her wake. Suguri didn't expect her to come back with one watermelon; rather, she expected to see her juggling three. As the two departed, Hime gave Suguri a nudge. “Next year, hm? I don't recall discussing a second trip.” “Well, it hasn't been a bad day. I want to make a sandcastle next time.” “Oh, yes. There's still things the beach has to offer us. I was planning to bury you up to your neck in the sand and then poke your cheeks.” “...Don't make me change my mind.” A year, Suguri thought, had always been such a short time. That was the problem. Time didn't freeze, as Hime said; it just went faster and faster while you weren't looking, and for all her speed Suguri had never been able to catch up with it. You blinked, and the Earth had come to the same spot again, and all that had changed was the year. But here, today, she blinked: the Earth remained where it was, and the year was the same, but her friends were wearing different expressions. It hadn't been a bad day, here at the beach. It hadn't been a bad day at all.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Inevitable

Series: 100% Orange Juice / Suguri Words: 1646 Characters: Suguri, Hime Originally posted: February 18, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: The title is a meta joke about my historical obsession with breakfast. Whenever I start a new series or experiment with new characters, you can almost always expect a dedicated breakfast scene sooner or later. This was when I first started really dialing in on Suguri and Hime’s characters; there’s a little risque content, but as usual, nothing graphic.

Eggs, milk, flour, butter; from those ingredients, the day is born. She glances down at the recipe, checking through the steps just one more time before she launches into action. It isn't the first time she's made pancakes, but she's had enough mishaps in the kitchen not to count her eggs before they're cooked. The smell of hot fat in a heavy iron pan was never one she imagined she'd grow to appreciate, but there are many things about her new home that have surprised her, and pleasantly at that. Every morning, birdsong winds its way through the yew tree beside the house and into the living room; there's nothing in space that can compare to being woken so gently, so naturally. Even now, songbirds twitter outside the window, dipping and carving through the air more gracefully than even she can. Cooking does not come naturally to her, not nearly as much as singing, or dancing, or war. There's a science to it, and an art, and she can never quite seem to combine the two, but her enthusiasm makes up for it – or so Suguri says. Really, she thinks Suguri is just happy to get breakfast at all. For all her unflappable skill in other areas, the girl makes a hapless chef, always just a little impatient and overly willing to take short cuts on the way to getting fed. Her omelettes are always speckled with long, silvery hair, her eggs are always overcooked, and she'll happily cut her toast with a beam sword if she can't find a knife. Hime quickly learned that if she wanted real meals, she'd be making them herself; today, like every morning, she dons her apron dutifully, if not with gusto. With the pancake batter gently sizzling in the pan and the bacon safely in the oven, she allows her mind to drift a little towards other, less gratifying concerns. She'll need to set the table, which is usually easier said than done. Historically, home decoration is not a thing Suguri has afforded a lot of thought to, and as a result what little cutlery she has in an eclectic, unfathomable mix. They have more corkscrews than they do forks, and there are five different can-openers but only one sad, bent little silver teaspoon. Knives, however, seem to multiply in their drawers at an alarming rate. The same design philosophy – or lack thereof – applies to the furniture. Alongside the cavernous beanbag chair currently serving as Hime's sleeping quarters, they have an old wicker chair, a barstool and a coffee table that has never seen a cup of coffee in its life – principally because Suguri insists that it belongs in the bathroom, for reasons that only make sense in an alternative universe. After a week of not-so-subtle prodding, Suguri had finally capitulated and brought home a loveseat so they could sit down together, and Hime had been very pleased until she lifted out the cushions and found a collection of coins that hadn't been minted in over a hundred years. Still, it was progress, and that was what counted. Definitely their most attractive piece was the kitchen table, which had almost nothing wrong with it provided that you didn't check the underside for fire damage. Otherwise, it almost seemed a shame to cover it with a cloth; it was elmwood, hard and smooth and cool to the touch, with attractive flecks between the grain. Trees, and the gifts that they gave, were one of Hime's favourite things about a terrestrial lifestyle. With the pancakes cooked (or a close approximation of it), she piles them onto the plates and sets out to capture some chairs. She takes the wicker chair for herself, and leaves the barstool for Suguri; it makes her feel a bit taller, and there's no weave to catch her hair in. She pours out the last of the milk for Suguri and some apple juice for herself, both served in whiskey glasses because of course they don't have anything resembling a normal glass. By the time she's finished she can hear the familiar bump, bump, bump of slippers coming down the stairs. Suguri, she has learned, is not a morning person. Suguri is hardly even an afternoon person. If there's nothing catastrophic to motivate her, she spends her first two waking hours in a warm, contented daze, before eventually transitioning into the calm, slightly bemused state that Hime knows and loves. That wasn't, of course, to say that there aren't perks to Morning Suguri. “G'morning,” Suguri says as she wanders into the kitchen, her hands balled in the sleeves of her powder-blue pyjamas. It actually comes out as 'guurmaaahnnnin', because syllables are not a thing Suguri really endorses at the best of times and even less so when freshly awoken, but Hime has a keen ear and a passion for Suguri-whispering. There is one thing she can pronounce, though. “Hug.” Morning hugs were one of the pleasant surprises that Hime found herself with in her new home. Why Suguri demanded one every morning without fail was a mystery to her, and one she could care less about the answer to; it was far easier, and more pleasant, to let Suguri shuffle over to her, wrap her arms around her waist, and gently headbutt her shoulder. Hime's part of the hug was to gently run her hands through Suguri's long hair until the girl relaxed into the embrace. “Hime,” Suguri mumbles into her shoulder. “You smell of bacon.” Hime smiles, and rubs her cheeck against the top of Suguri's head. “Yes, well, bacon is delicious. You, on the other hand, smell of not showering.” “Muuuuuh. I'll do it after breakfast.” “Ahh. So childish,” Hime teases, perhaps a little indulgently. In the morning Suguri acts like a kid, but she gets to be childish for the rest of the day. “Nyuh. It takes too long. I wanna cut my hair.” “Well, I don't disagree. We could get matching hairstyles.” The thought goes without a reply; whatever strange desire propels Suguri to indiscriminate hugging has been temporarily sated, and now she has her stomach to attend to. Gently disentangling herself from Hime's arms, she floats over to the barstool (there is usually a no-flying pact while they're in the house, because it leads to a lot of collisions with lampshades, but Hime lets it slide), and perches precariously on top of it, her long silver hair hanging down behind her. She drinks half of the milk at a gulp, grimaces, and finishes off the rest; this part of Suguri's morning is, Hime has been told, Very Important. Before long a plate of pancakes has materialised in front of her, complete with a few crispy rashers of bacon as a bonus. “How is it?” Hime asks, carefully dissecting her own pancakes with a knife. She's a little disappointed with how they turned out; she was going for fluffy, but ended up with dense instead. “Mpfmf,” Suguri replied, attacking her own plate with considerably less restraint. “I'll take that as a passing grade, then. C minus, perhaps.” “Nuh. B.” The meal continues in relative quiet; because neither of them is all that good at cooking, they both have a healthy respect for whatever food does survive their ministrations. Besides, they have all day for conversation, and birdsong in the meantime. There is nothing wrong, Hime thinks, with a comfortable silence. Before long, Suguri is sitting back – as much as she can on a barstool, anyway – and letting the food work its way through her system. The process of waking up has begun. “You know,” Hime says, watching Suguri stretch, “I think breakfast is one of the planetside traditions I wish we'd kept most in when we went to space. Everybody just ate when they felt like it, there.” Suguri yawns, and hops down from the barstool. “Mm. I think it's one of my favourite traditions now, too. I'll get the plates.” Hime smiles, but there is just a touch of steel behind it. “Oh no, you don't. I think I shall get the plates, and you can get a shower. You smell fine right now, but you'd smell better with some of that body wash I picked up the other day.” “Muurgh. Fine,” Suguri says, wearing what seems dangerously close to a pout. “I'll see you in an hour or so.” Actually, it's usually an hour and a half, but she can dream. Before she walks out of the kitchen, Suguri turns, takes in Hime's golden hair and glowing smile, and remembers that her mornings were not always so; that once upon a time there was no sound, and breakfast was a slice of bread with nothing on it. “Hime. Thank you for cooking for me. I'd like it if you'd cook for me tomorrow, too.” “And the day after that, and the day after that... I'll be a respectable chef in no time,” Hime smiles. “It is, as always, a pleasure.” Their gazes meet, and for a moment Suguri feels a warmth that has nothing to do with a full belly or the sunshine streaming in from the window. She feels herself waking up, her mind whirring into motion to really start the day. “Wait,” she says, slowly. “Hime?” “Yes?” As the haze of sleep lifts, Suguri's placid smile drops a little; her eyes widen as she checks and re-checks what she's seeing. Bare shoulders, exposed legs. Her fingertips vaguely recall the feel of warm skin. “Uh. Well. Are you, um, wearing anything, under that apron?” “Ah. I was wondering if you'd notice. I thought I'd try it out, just the once. Earth traditions are so very fascinating, don't you agree?” Hime asks, with a smile as golden as the sun. “I should probably warn you – I'm about to turn around to do the dishes. I do hope you enjoy your shower.”

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Fear Response

Series: 100% Orange Juice / QPverse Words: 1234 Characters: Aru, Arthur, Kyousuke, QP Originally posted: February 16, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: The first and only time I’ve done a story with Kyousuke in it to date, and a very hot-blooded and manly story it is too.

Arthur was not, by any means, a small man. If you took his ears into account – and it would be unwise for your continued wellbeing not to – he stood at almost seven foot. The bits of him that were not ears (which were surprisingly soft and delicate) were invariably made of tight, wirey muscle, the kind that back alley brawlers aspired to and chefs would discard as being too manly to cook. As such, there wasn't too much that he was scared of. Certainly, there was Aru, but Aru seemed to inspire the same vague, existential dread in almost everybody she encountered. The girl always felt like she was judging you, and that her judgement had some pretty hefty weight attached to it. She also would occasionally go out at night and come back, bruised, swollen and scarred, with the excuse that she had had a sudden urge to go and fight bears. Arthur wasn't an idiot. He was fairly sure that she wasn't fighting bears, but he was also fairly sure that whatever fights she got into she won, and by a very wide margin at that. He discovered his second fear on a peaceful Thursday afternoon, when a young man burst into the Rbit room sweating profusely and yelling. Arthur peered at him over the top of his sunglasses; the boy was wearing a school uniform, but not one that Arthur recognised. “Where?! I saw him come in here!” the boy shouted. Arthur put down the glass he had been polishing. He sometimes forgot he didn't work in a bar, and spent two to three hours polishing the same glass with a rag. It soothed his thirst for justice, in ways he could not even begin to fathom. “Oi, oi. Quit yelling in my shop. Now tell me what you want.” The boy looked Arthur up and down; the rabbit saw the boy's eyes go to his feet, up to his face, his feet again, and then to the tips of his ears. Arthur grinned, and forsook his traditional slouch to stand up straight, a practice known in the world of shady business as 'looming'. Arthur was very good at looming, and was rewarded by the boy tensing his entire body at once. Despite that, his voice was cool and languid when he spoke. “I saw a boy dressed in girl's clothes come in here. Where is he?” “A boy?” Arthur snorted. “Listen. You and me might be the only males ever to have set foot in this shop. We have an exclusive clientèle. And trust me, kid – I don't think you're it. If you're looking for boys dressed as girls, look somewhere else.” The boy's eyebrows narrowed. He had fine features – maybe a little too fine. But his shoulders, now that Arthur looked at them, were surprisingly broad, and his steps were a little heavier than they should be for a guy his height. The looked Arthur square in the eye, a defiant set to his jaw. The ceiling fan whirred overhead, pitifully straining against the humid summer air. “That boy,” the young man said, touching his palm to his chest, “is my most precious person. If I have to fight you to get to him, then so be it.” It was traditional, at this point, for there to be a moment of silence in which the challenge was allowed to resonate. Arthur was not particularly interested in tradition, and burst out laughing immediately. “Heh. That's somethin' else, kid. I don't know anything about this boy you're looking for, but I can see you're too dumb to listen to your seniors.” “And I can see you're too ignorant to give up the game. This is why unrefined men like you make me sick. You have no respect for the finer feelings of a man's soul,” the boy spat. Arthur felt his jaw grinding, and he took two very firm, deliberate steps towards his opponent. “You're real brave to come in here and talk to me about a man's soul, boy. Lucky for you, I got a little sympathy left for idiots too dumb to back down. Come over here. I'll teach you how men settle things.” He made a show of turning his back to the boy, and set down a stool on either side of the shop counter. They were good stools. He had once hit a man in the head with one and the stool very resoundingly won, to cheers from the audience. It went on to become champion of inanimate objects MMA for two consecutive years. “We'll settle this with an arm wrestle. If you win, I'll help you look for this precious person of yours. If I win, you're going home.” “And if I refuse?” the boy asked archly. “Then you're a coward, and you're going home in an ambulance,” Arthur said, putting his elbow on the counter. “Your choice, kid.” “Tch. Fine. But I won't hold back for a brute like you.” With that, the boy did something that Arthur wasn't expecting: he started to quickly unbutton his shirt. The motions were practised, efficient. With one final flourish he tossed it to the floor, revealing a body packed with a surprising amount of muscle, glistening with sweat from his earlier running. He looked Arthur in the eye, and smiled wanly. “Having second thoughts?” Arthur groaned. “Kid... this is gettin' weird. I don't know if you did that to throw me or what, but it ain't gonna make your arm work any better.” “What? Don't you have the confidence to do something like this? I thought you were a bigger man than that,” the boy taunted. It was bait. Arthur knew it was bait. Rabbits knew bait when they saw it. But with all the testosterone and talk about men's souls, he wasn't about to let some skinny punk have anything over him. “I can't believe I'm doin' this. But men meet on a level playing field,” he said, undoing his collar. That was why, when she came home from a lovely lunch and strode into the shop from the back entrance, Aru found two very sweaty, half-naked men holding hands and grunting profusely. But Aru, although rather a smaller rabbit than Arthur, was quite used to weird occurrences. She turned to QP, who had dropped her bag of shopping to the floor in absolute open-mouthed astonishment, and said, in the lowest voice she could muster, “Maybe we ought to come back later. A lot later. Maybe we could stay at your house...?” Aru's lowest voice, however, was not low enough. The violet-haired boy glanced at her. He glanced at QP. His face did an interesting manoeuvre where it rearranged all its features twice before settling into the delighted expression a crocodile wears when something swims towards its jaws. He said one accusing, breathless word. “Kyupita.” Aru looked at QP. QP looked at Aru. Arthur looked at his opponent, who had ceased paying attention and had his hand smashed violently against the counter. “Aru? I'm really, really sorry,” QP said, putting her shopping on the counter. Then, in a voice that was shaking perhaps a little too much to be called 'calm', she said something else. “Hyper Mode.” As the growing swell of luminous bullets overtook him and began shredding the structure of the shop, Arthur – at long last – found something he thought worthy of being feared.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Free Lunch

Series: 100% Orange Juice / QPverse Words: 1705 Characters: Aru, Krilalaris, QP, Syura Originally posted: February 13, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: Apparently this was a joke Valentine’s story. I basically forgot all about it.

Even in a world full of mythical beasts and godlike battle-maidens who could strike down the unworthy with only a few sparse clusters of glittering bullets, there was one rarity greater than any other: the legendary 'free lunch'. Aru knew this. She knew that other, less savoury things often masqueraded as free lunches to trap the unwary, like a mimic assuming the form of a treasure chest before it gobbled down a greedy adventurer. But then bunny in red was, well, in the red, and a lunch she didn't have to pay for in cold, hard cash might be worth the price extracted. “So, Aru,” Syura began, assuming her businesslike smirk. “I assume you want to know why I invited you for lunch today.” “I want you to tell me what you want so I can refuse outright before we start negotiations,” Aru replied grumpily. “That's why I like you, Aru. You always cut straight to the chase. Oh, Krila, if you're hungry you can eat the rolls.” Krila, although bemused at being summoned by a girl she rarely interacted with, needed no encouragement. The lady in black was also, perenially, in the red. Cleared of any obstacles to her moral dubiousness, Syura adopted her most businesslike voice, which was not particularly businesslike at all. “What I want in exchange for this lunch is very simple. From you, Aru, I want information. Specifically, how far you've gotten with QP. And Krila... well, I don't actually know what I want. I felt sorry for you, I guess. Just try to act like a normal person long enough to gossip with me about my best friend's love life, and we'll call it square.” Krila nodded vigorously. “I shall make the attempt, but I warn thee, the mantle of banality may be too great for my dark soul to –” “I'll take it. Aru, you can start.” Aru glowered, and tapped her index finger against the pristine white tablecloth. “The answer is nil. We're friends. We were hungry at the same time and place. We ate lunch together. She paid. The end.” The waiter arrived, brandishing breadsticks and condiments. Krila seized upon them with a force that might well have been demonic. Aru had never before seen a girl consume an entire breadstick without chewing, but she was pretty sure it broke public indecency laws. Aru and Syura looked at each other. “Krila,” Aru said quietly, “Has anybody ever told you that you should consider performing at birthday parties?” “With the right audience, I think we – I mean, you – could make a lot of money,” Syura added. “Of course!” Krila said, squeezing her doll close to her chest. “I have performed my Dark Shadow Boundary Dance on numerous occasions. All I require is a sacrifice of tiny sausages and chunks of cheese, impaled on the same length of unholy wood.” Aru decided that Krila was an utterly innocent babe and, as a gesture of mercy, decided to omit certain words in the last sentence from her memory. After a moment of bemused silence, Syura returned to the point at hand. “But you went for lunch together! There was a time, a date, two pretty women that I most definitely don't feel attracted to on any level. There must be details, and they have to have been scandalous. All details are.” Aru looked around the crowded restaurant, at the linens and the candlesticks and the happily besotted couples surrounding their table, and began to worry about a number of things. Her stomach, however, continued to growl, and she settled for just appraising the nearest convenient escape route rather than fleeing immediately. “What am I supposed to say?” she asked, holding her palms up. “The food was good. The company was good. We talked about socks. She has radical opinions on socks that I don't necessarily agree with and wouldn't want to repeat around innocent children.” She broke off to look meaningfully at Krila, before continuing. “I don't really know what details you expect me to have, or how they could be anything interesting.”Syura heaved a deep, indulgent sigh, like a teacher about to bestow a valuable lesson upon a wide-eyed schoolchild. “Well, there's the question of what restaurant it was, and who picked it. Remember before you answer that I'm buying you lunch.” Aru groaned. There was the leverage she had been expecting. If Syura decided she didn't want to pay, Aru didn't have the funds to cover it. She'd have to dine and dash, and as an upstanding citizen and as a business owner who understood the true weight of the transgression, she couldn't allow herself to do it. Her hands were tied. But, she thought, there was a way out. If she simply ate as many complementary breadsticks as she could, she could leave before the meal was served and still not be a bad person. It was a risk, since if she ate too many breadsticks and stayed she would ruin the value proposition of the meal by not being hungry, but it was a gamble she was willing to take. “We went to that little tavern place by the market. The one where you sit on barrels instead of chairs. QP suggested it,” she answered at last, trying to sound as defeated as possible. If she seemed like she'd lost, she could maybe get away with being sparse with the details and Syura would assume there was nothing else to tell. She quietly stuffed a breadstick into her mouth. Krila's eyes widened. “Oho! I happen to know that those barrels are in fact casks of dark essence, in which swim the Serpents of the Braided Venom Willows. You have my respect for surviving such a trial, as does the Holy Beast Maiden.” “Krila, I don't know what you just said. I just heard a string of nouns,” Syura said cheerfully. “But what I do know is that that place is super romantic.” Aru looked at the candlelit dinners being dispensed around them, and wondered if, like the average videogame character, Syura just didn't have the equip slots necessary for a sense of irony. “What did you eat?” “I had braised vegetables. She had steak.” Aru ate another breadstick. “Ugh. That's so unfair. She should be, like, a ball of dough by now. You get meat, or you get sweets, one or the other. And if you get both, you get fat,” Syura groused. Krila, upon hearing sweets and steak being discussed in the same sentence, began to drool. “Did she try and make out with you?” With the most absolute calm, Aru picked up her glass of water, took a hearty swig, and immediately sprayed it back out. “Such commitment!” Krila murmured. “I guess it's true what they say. A true artist makes their own opportunities rather than waiting for opportunities to show up,” Syura nodded. Aru, having achieved the required dramatic effect, set her glower to stun. “Don't you think that question skipped a few steps? You could have asked if we held hands, or gazed deeply into each other's eyes, or anything, but you went straight to making out?” Syura shrugged. “Go big or go home.” “I agree! What would you rather face, Rabbit of Crimson Moons: a dragon, or a really big dragon?” Krila asked. “Right now I'd rather go home. I've had enough breadsticks to make this worth my time,” Aru said, standing up. Syura's mouth hung open in a little gasp as she leapt to several conclusions, all of them wrong. “She did, didn't she? Did she have dog breath? I bet she had dog breath. You should carry some mints around in case she tries to kiss you. I know I do.” Aru groaned, attracting suspicious looks from any number of surrounding lovebirds. “That is, in order, wrong, probably wrong, and really weird. I'm leaving.” “Waitwaitwaitwait!” Syura gasped, lunging over the table and catching hold of Aru's sleeve. The candle wobbled precariously and would have toppled, but for the timely intervention of Krila. With a speed and clarity that she had clearly purloined from a ninja, she shot out a hand and seized the candlestick. Unfortunately, she squandered any kudos from her endeavour by suddenly realising that not so very far from a sword, and immediately attempting to wield it in the name of the forces of darkness. “Aru, I'm sorry. Listen, I probably pushed you too far, but... I just wanted to do the romantic gossip thing, like in all the VNs I read. I never get the chance to, because my best friend is QP and she's totally like a dense RPG protagonist when it comes to romance.” “I agree with you there. She's like a dwarf star. You just can't avoid getting caught in her gravitational field.” The two looked at each other and, for a moment, smiled. Krila stole a candlestick from another table and began dual wielding, finally living her lifelong dream of leveling in the rogue class, so that one day she could prestige into an assassin. For a brief moment, the world was at peace. The chef, having heard the commotion, marched out of the kitchen with her kitchen knives in hand; Aru recognised her as Natsumi, and briefly marvelled at how small the world was. The knives began to fly, and the world returned to the natural order of things. *** “Hi, Aru! I came again today. Hey, what happened to your face?” QP, her face full of concern, pointed at the band-aid on Aru's cheek. The bunny winced, and searched for an excuse that didn't involve being violently ejected from a restaurant with two weirdos. “I cut myself shaving,” she said, studiously looking in any direction apart from QP's. “You shave?” QP asked, blinking. “My legs, yes.” QP's brain worked for a moment, before filing the anomaly under 'too much effort' and continuing on the path of the conversation she had planned on having. Aru noticed her fiddling with the hem of her dress, and felt her own heart sink. “Sooooo, um, I don't know if you know this, but there's a rumour going around that you and Syura were eating together at a romantic restaurant, and I just wondered...”

[fox-and-benedict]

Suguri with short hair

I traced the fence.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Domesticated

Series: 100% OJ / Suguri Words: 500 Characters: Suguri, Hime Originally Posted: February 11, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: A third Sugi/Hime. Very cosy. Also the beginning of the great Hime Temptation Strategy. Hime’s bond with the computer now looks funnier considering she’s been classified as an “AI” in canon.

There were times in Suguri's life when speed was a necessity. Bullets, for example, did not have a tendency to hang around while you leisurely sauntered out of the way; an impending crisis did not allow you the time to drink your last sip of tea and nibble a granola bar before you set out. Using the computer was another of these situations. Normally, Suguri used it to gather data about the state of the world's environment. While the world had more or less recovered from the Great War of the past, Suguri still had a duty to collate data, locate key areas of environmental crises, do what she could to stop them, and send back first-hand accounts of the severity when she couldn't. The problem with using the computer was that Hime was bonded to it on a spiritual level and seemed to have a sixth sense that told her when it had been turned on. Within fifteen minutes of it being booted up, she would stop whatever she was doing and wander into the room as if drawn by magnetism. She would look at Suguri, look at the quietly humming machine on her lap, and say, in her most innocent and delighted voice: “Oh, you're using the computer? Can I see?” The phenomenon, Suguri found, was very strong. Pots of rice had been left to burn, newspapers had gone unread, bowls of porridge had cooled into wintry oat deserts. For a few days Suguri had trialed the tactic of only using it when Hime was in the shower, but that only led to Hime meandering into the living room sopping wet, a towel clinging half-heartedly to her slender body, with complaints about having run out of some obscure bathroom necessity. Upon discovering the computer, she would plop herself into the chair next to Suguri – curling into her body ever so slightly – and gaze at whatever data Suguri was looking at. She had a good mind for it, often remembering more than Suguri did herself. But after exactly twelve and a half minutes, without fail, she would shift ever so slightly closer and say:“Suguri? May we watch videos of cats?” And without fail, Suguri would sigh, look at the occasionally half-naked woman next to her, and open a video of a cat. (She was quite sure that Hime had seen every video of a cat still in existence. She was also quite sure Hime was capable of starting the computer and watching videos of cats by herself, but for some reason never had the desire to). For the next hour or so, Hime would watch the screen with rapt attention, occasionally pausing to explain that cats were new and wonderful to her, spaceships being generally deprived of feline company. When the hour was done, she would rush off to tend to whatever calamity had ensued in her absence. Suguri herself was not nearly so fond of cats. But she found it just as fun to watch Hime instead.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Visionary

Series: 100% OJ / Suguri Words: 500 Characters: Suguri, Hime First posted: February 9th, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: A second 500 word Sugi/Hime piece. This was the beginning of the great ice cream obsession. Later stories give us a pretty good idea of Hime’s answer to the last question.

It was a Monday, although Mondays had ceased to mean anything for either of them. Living so long threw time into a strange relief. There was the past, which stretched out so far that it could only be comprehended a little at a time; the future, potentially limitless; and the present, vivid and delightful in the moment. There was no place for Mondays in a timeline like that. The weather, however, still had a measure of respect for Mondays, and had obliged tradition by throwing down lashings of rain since morning. It fell in fat, stinging drops across cobbled streets and trickled down from the roofs of the buildings that had been restored since the war. Of course, Hime was overjoyed. She was rarely anything else, it seemed. Wet, miserable mornings provided an excuse to put on long coats and clomp around the streets in heavy boots, splashing in puddles and generally taking sensations that had long been denied to her on a starfarer's ship. In particular, Suguri found her love for heavy clothing baffling. “Well, imagine wearing nothing heavier than a t-shirt for three thousand years. I've gotten so used to light clothes that heavy ones throw off my balance and make things interesting,” Hime had said when asked about it. Suguri, who had lived comfortably in the same zip-up jacket for four hundred years, didn't quite see the appeal. Neither, though, did she see the appeal of running around in the rain without an umbrella. She was half-tempted to take off and get above cloud level to wait out the showers, but then she'd miss Hime splashing around – and that was something she did see the appeal of. “Oh, Suguri! You look so silly with your hair plastered to your scalp like that!” Hime giggled, conveniently ignoring the fact that her own hair was scarcely any better. “Oh, I know! We should get hats together. I adore hats!” “Mm? What kind?” There was a moment as Hime processed the question, and failed to come up with a satisfactory answer. “Just... hats. In general. All of them, I suppose.” “I…see. Well, I'm sure there's a hat shop around here somewhere. Shall we get some lunch first?” Hime came to a dead stop. She stood, straight-backed and dripping with rain, her mouth curved into a little 'o' of sudden, incredible inspiration. “Suguri,” she said, with an intensity she didn't even muster in the middle of pitched battle. “You are my best friend.” Suguri let out a low whistle. “That is terrifying.” “Earlier, I saw a shop selling ice cream–” “Hime, that's a bad–” “So once, just this once–” “Listen–” “Can we have ice cream for lunch?” In her mind's eye, Suguri saw an ice cream dish piled high with as many scoops as would fit. She saw mounds of brightly coloured sprinkles. She saw eight different kinds of sauces, and sickly-sweet stomach aches. With her real eye, she saw Hime pouting. She sighed. “Strawberry or chocolate?”

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Explorers

Series: 100% Orange Juice / Suguri Words: 500 Characters: Suguri, Hime Originally posted: February 9th, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: This might be the first ‘real’ 100% Orange Juice story I ever wrote. You’ve not really written for 100% OJ until you’ve shipped Sugi/Hime, right? I wrote it for a wordcount limit of exactly 500 words, and it seems to have worked out in retrospect.

Two figures wander under the shade of evergreen trees, streaks of silver and gold cast in silhouette by the slowly rising sun. The forest is awakening gradually as the light of the dawn brushes across its face; around them there is the shuffle of the beasts and the birds falling into the rhythm of the day. “I feel like I've seen this place before,” Suguri says, scratching her head. The world smells of morning dew; there are grass stains on her skirt. “I shouldn't be surprised,” Hime yawns. “But perhaps not from the ground, and most definitely not with me.” Her golden hair is a mess. For all her beauty, Hime is a graceless sleeper; she tosses and turns, excited by dreams of the day to come. This world, which Suguri has lived in for ten thousand years, is fresh and new to her, an ever expanding horizon. In a very small and quiet way, Suguri is jealous of that, but being able to see a brand new world being discovered isn't bad either. More by instinct than purpose, she runs her hands through Hime's hair, letting it tumble gently through her fingers until it falls into something approaching its natural arrangement. “Thank you,” Hime says, a wry smile playing across her lips. “I'm sure the squirrels will appreciate your brief foray into the world of hairdressing.” “…The squirrels only have to look at you for an hour. I'll be looking at you all day.” Hime bites back a teasing remark. Although the nominal purpose of the trip is for her to get to know her new home, a large part of it has been getting to know her friend. It isn't easy. There's ten thousand years of history to contemplate, hundreds of formative experiences, opinions, and knowledge. What she has learned thus far is that Suguri, even before she is a strong person, is a warm person – warmer, sometimes, than she can contain. Every so often she misspeaks, or reaches out just a touch too tenderly, and it betrays that warmth when her appearance doesn't. “Are you done?” Hime asks, tilting her head back in Suguri's hands to look her friend in the face. Suguri frowns, but her hands keep moving, always gentle, always calm. “Just a little more. The forest won't run away, you know.” “Oh? You know, I thought it might. I don't have much experience with forests, you know. I suppose we should catch up to it after a while, though.” Suguri's brow creases; it takes a moment of decision before she decides to play along. “Mm. We're both very fast.” “Apart from when we're doing hair.” “Yes, yes,” Suguri says, and abruptly gives Hime's hair a quick ruffle to undo all her hard work. “Are you happy now?” “Oh, my. Whatever will the squirrels think?” “Let's go and ask them,” Suguri replies, standing up. “Won't they run?” “Of course,” Suguri says, reaching out a hand to help Hime up. “But, after all, we're very fast.”

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Drabble Pack 1

A/N: I love drabbles. I enjoy writing them, I enjoy the skills they teach me, and I think overall they’re super fun to do. There’s something about having to fit stuff into exactly 100 words that fires up my creativity, and one of the greatest benefits of Tumblr over blogspot for me might actually be that it’s a more suitable format for them.

Originally, these were posted separately. I’ve compressed them into one entry here for the purpose of archiving. They’re mostly drabbles (100 words), although there are a few droubles (200 words) mixed in, which I’ll mark.

Paperweight

Kyoko, like a scolding headmistress, continued pacing in front of Saki. Her hair was singed. “Why are we here?” she asked. “...Because I blew up the kitchen.” “My kitchen. On my birthday. ” Saki winced. Inside her head, she had put herself in the category of 'bad houseguest'.  “Why did you blow up my kitchen?”  “There was a gust, and my newspaper–” “So you hastily put something on the newspaper.” “Yes.” “And it was a stick grenade.” “I'm sorry!” Sighing, Kyoko put down the plate of cake that survived the blast. Slowly, deliberately, she pushed her friend's face into it.

Monocle

A backless evening dress with a plunging neckline. A flashy hairstyle out of a fashion magazine. A disarming, lascivious smile. That was all it took to get an invite to a party for the rich and the famous, although her only concern is the former. “Wow, boss. You look killer,” Tomato says, her face set in awe. She basks in the admiration of her underlings, but keeps her goal in mind. She checks her make-up, her earpiece, the pistol strapped to her thigh. Everything is ready. “Alright, Warudas! It's time to begin the operation,” Yuki announces. “Let's make some cash.”

Bodkin There is a blade, spoken of in legends; sharp enough to tear through skin, small enough to conceal in the palm of the hand – a necromantic blade for stitching together the remains of the dead. And now, she holds it in her hand. A few stabs as practice: it whistles through the air, sings as it dips into the body, snck-snck-snck, as quickly as she dares to use it. “Truly, this is the sword of my soul,” she mutters, holding the needle to the sky. “It befits only one such as me... Krilalaris, the dark witch of home economics! Ahuhuhuhu...”

Ascot (Drouble)

QP struggled, but found no purchase with her wrists tied behind her back with scarves, and the rest of her tied to the chair she was sitting on. All she could do was rock her seat. “I thought you had changed! You said all you wanted to do was enjoy pudding and play games! You tricked me with that bet!” “Quit that. You lost, so you have to play the penalty game,” Yuki taunted. “I have so many exotic puddings for you. Soy sauce, wasabi, curry powder... no expenses spared. I even made sure to tie you down with something soft, so your poor doggy wrists don't hurt.” The world went black as Yuki selected another scarf and bound it across QP's eyes. She found her senses already sharpening against her will. Her skin prickled with goosebumps as she felt Yuki's fingertips brush against her cheek, before trailing down her face to settle underneath her chin. “All you have to do,” Yuki whispered, uncomfortably close to her ear, “is identify five puddings, and I'll untie you. Should be easy, right?”QP nodded with what she hoped look like confidence. “Good. Now,” Yuki purred, “Be a good girl, and open wide.”

Spider

"Eeeek!" Within a second Suguri burst into action, flashing across the hall in a heartbeat. As if it had been a choreographed dance, Hime rushed out of the bathroom and leapt into her arms. "Suguri! I saw a --" "That's a washcloth." Hime looked up at her with teary eyes, close enough to see the fineness of her eyelashes. Then she relaxed into Suguri's arms and assumed a coy grin. "I wanted to see if you would catch me." Suguri rolled her eyes. She did a lot more eye-rolling these days. “I ought to drop you.” But she didn't.

Curlers

It was meant to be a quiet evening – snacks, pyjamas, truth or dare where everybody picked truth. Then Krila found the perm rods, and decided they made her look like Medusa. Syura, predictably, ran with it. “Sir Aru! Cleave her in twain with your mighty greatsword and save Princess QP!” Syura the cleric yelled. Aru didn't have a greatsword. Aru had a standing lamp. Dark Krilalaris surged forward. Her foot came down on a lone cup of pudding left on the floor. A terrifying silence descended upon the room. Tearing off her lampshade tiara, the true final boss revealed herself.

Marching Band

She soars through pillowed clouds, a blue sky stretching out before her. A soldier older than any other, she counts only the birds as her brothers in arms; she has outlived the war that created her, but not the peace that she made from it.She touches down before a cottage with a thatched roof, where an old friend waits. She is singing a song as old as either of them, a melody from their youth. The song ends and Sham smiles, arms open to greet her; and at last Sora knows that she has finished the long march home.

[fox-and-benedict]

[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Favourite Customer

Series: 100% Orange Juice/ QP Shooting ‘verse Words: 1737 Characters: QP, Aru, Arthur, Syura Originally Posted: Janurary 20th, 2017 (blogspot version) A/N: This is is still one of my favourite humour pieces. Although I feel like I’ve drifted away from this style since, I would like to reprise it or reincorporate it into future comedy stories -- nothing that produces the phrase ‘pew pew windmill’ can be bad. This was also the start of my QP/Aru shipping.

Aru's ears drooped. Despite being a functional killing machine equipped with the powers of flight, seasonal gifts, and spewing bullets out of her face, she was still beholden to her lapine nature. Some part of her would always dislike loud noises, unnatural tastes and arguments, and the look on Arthur's face told her that an argument was well on the way. "Hey, Mr Shopkeeper. Give me a cola, with plenty of ice," Syura commanded. Syura was petite, redheaded, and completely unaware of her own particular place on the food chain. There was a certain smugness about her that screamed Stage 1 boss, in Aru's opinion. "Do this look like a grocery store, kid?" Arthur growled, his eye twitching behind his dark glasses. The butt of his cigarette, held loosely at the corner of his mouth in defiance of all smoking laws, crumpled as his jaw begin to grind. "We don't stock cola." "Who cares if you stock it? I asked for a cola. A real, hot-blooded merchant would see this as an opportunity," Syura replied, half wheedling, half scolding. "Oh, believe me, my blood is boiling right about now. I'm a businessman, not an errand boy. How about you take a little walk around the block and get a cola yourself?" "Hey, I'm doing you a favour, businessman. You know how much time and money real businesses spend on analytics to figure out what their customers want? I just told you for free. It's my first time in this shop, my frenemy is showing me around, and I want a cola. Make it happen," the girl said, puffing out her somewhat unimpressive chest. "Of course, I'll pay you extra for your time. I'm not an unreasonable lady." "That's just because you ain't a lady," Arthur sighed. He stubbed out his cigarette in a cheap ashtray on the shop counter, and blew a leisurely ring of smoke. "...How much extra we talking about?" Syura smiled a catlike smile, and launched her negotiations in earnest. She was a veteran of videogame bartering systems and economics; she knew how much a broadsword was worth and how much an adventurer could expect to be paid for slaying their first novelty giant-sized rat. Arthur, on the other hand, knew how to use his stern looks and rough voice to gouge a price. It ought to be a close contest, Aru thought, but it was better than an actual fight. Assured that she would have no need to administer some concussive diplomacy, she turned her attention to QP. QP was a regular customer at the Rbit Room. In fact, she was the regular customer. Not everybody had the temperament, discipline or desire to learn the ancient arts of the battle bunnies. In fact, the general, uneducated consensus was that these arts did not exist, which was a definite problem when it came to paying the bills. Yet QP would wander into the shop after school like clockwork, clutching her allowance in her hands, carefully inspecting musty tomes on rabbit warfare and then asking if the contents could, perhaps, be summed up in the form of a limerick or a haiku to help her understand them. Aru was not particularly good at either, which lead to memorable offerings like: Glimmer of power, You are the pew-pew windmill What up, it's Orbit Regardless, the dog girl always seemed to appreciate the effort, because, as she said, it came from the heart. She had a talent for seeing the best in everybody that Aru, as a result of her own duty to peer into the hearts of children across the globe and pronounce a select portion of them to be naughty in the sovereign eyes of Santa, had difficulty fathoming. QP did not, for instance, see Arthur as a grizzled, chain smoking, questionably ethical merchant motivated only by raw greed and the fear of Aru's retribution. In fact, her opinion of Arthur seemed to stop at "tall", which was a small mercy for all parties involved. "What brings you here today, QP? We're always delighted to see you, but are you looking for anything in particular?" Aru asked, ignoring the intense economic debate going on between Syura and Arthur. QP scratched her nose. "Well, uh... Actually, Syura was just being really weird, and I needed an adult. The closest thing to an adult I know is a big bullying cat who throws darts around everywhere and leads an evil organisation dedicated to taking over the world, so I decided you were my next best bet." "You keep such interesting social circles," Aru murmured. "I don't really keep them. I'd throw them back into the ocean if I could. I just keep running into strange people and they stick to me," the dog replied mournfully. Ah, so she's acquired a quirky stable of friends she doesn't really like that much, Aru thought. She's finally begun to mature as a shoot 'em up protagonist. She left that unsaid, and tried a different tack. "I'm happy for you to hang around as long as you like, but I don't really understand... Syura is your friend, right?" "Kind of." "Kind of?" "It's ambiguous," Syura said proudly, having paid Arthur four times the going rate for a cola and sent him on his way. She was flush from what she no doubt considered a victory. "Nice to meet you, by the way. I'm Syura, embryonic developer of videogames. One day, I will hatch into a beautiful game dev swan!" Aru fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Very interesting social circles, indeed. What exactly was she doing that was so weird?" QP opened her mouth to talk, but Syura beat her to it. "I wasn't doing anything weird. In fact, I was being generous, and telling my unemployed friend here how I'd give her a job when I get my studio all set up." "She wants me to wear a maid outfit," QP added, mournfully. Syura shrugged. "Well, of course. Your head is full of pudding, so I can't let you handle any of the code. All you'd need to do is flutter around the studio, bring me tea, address me as master, let me rest my head in your lap and massage my temples whenever I get tired of looking at the computer screen, and then occasionally do some light debugging. It's a cushy gig!" "The rest I could deal with, but the debugging is too much! It's sexual harassment! Tell her, Aru!" the dog said, and clung to Aru's arm like it was a anchor against a flood of madness. Aru, however, had transcended her mortal form and was roaming in the magical world of her own imagination. A girl with dog ears and a maid outfit? Surely it was too much power for one mortal to have. The amount of money and popularity that she could amass in the hidden circles of the world was astronomical. A very small part of Aru -- the part that mourned as it watched the Rbit room go into decline, the part that wanted to eat quality food instead of economy rice day after day after day -- whispered in the back of her head, telling her that she should harness that power. Another part of Aru had gone in an entirely different direction. QP was her favourite customer, but she'd rarely ever seen her wearing anything but her school uniform. Putting aside the maid cosplay, which was too dangerous to think about in public, she wondered what her friend would look like in more classically feminine clothes. "Aru? Earth to Aru? You zoned out for a little while there," QP called, waving her hand in front of the rabbit's eyes. "While drooling," Syura added helpfully. "Yes, well, um, shop harassment is against sexual rules. I mean, sexual harassment is against shop rules!" the rabbit replied, feeling a trickle of sweat wind its way down her forehead. There was a moment of silence. Then there was another moment of silence, consecutive to the last. Moments of silence began to shunt into each other like minecarts on a crowded track. Overpopulation of moments of silence began to threaten the national ecosystem, and local government authorities sent out an all-points bulletin to park rangers announcing the sad necessity of a cull. Then, at last, Syura spoke. "Fine. I'll allow it. You go on ahead, QP. I want to actually look around this goofy little shop and drink my cola." QP, anxious to escape and run home for a cup of well-earned pudding, seized the chance and trotted out of the shop. Syura watched her go, a wide smile on her face. After the dog had been gone for a good few seconds, she turned to Aru, and grinned. Aru blanched. "...Were you looking for any merchandise in particular?" she tried. "No," Syura replied, shrugging. "I was just thinking that maybe we share some interests, you know? We could be great friends. Hey, hey. Take a look at this for a moment." She produced a phone from her pocket, and began pressing buttons faster than Aru could comprehend, her fingers no more than a blur passing over the screen. Before long, she had found what she was looking for, and presented the phone to Aru, her chest puffed out with pride. On the screen was a picture of a maid uniform. It was high quality, dyed sumptuous black with a pristine white apron. It was also very short. Aru felt breezy just looking at it. "So, let's skip the formalities and get down to business. I think that with enough prodding, I can get QP into this thing. How much are you prepared to pay for pictures?" "...Make me an offer," Aru said, making a steeple of her fingers. "20 apiece?" "20?! Listen, friend, I asked you to make me an offer, not make me angry," Aru growled, warming to her part. Arthur was a hard nosed, occasionally crooked businessman. Aru kept the Rbit room in business and still had enough left over to buy toys for the world's children at the end of the year. Negotiating was her strong suit. "For 20, I'd want fifteen minutes of lap pillow and the skirt would need to be at least two inches shorter." Syura looked at her, blank eyed. Then, slowly, she began to smile. "You know what, Aru?" she said. "I think we're gonna get along great."