#multiphenomenal

Edmundo leans back, away from their kiss. It is reluctant, yes, but still a retreat. Their faces are still close enough that they can share breaths, but the distance means no contact. No heat.

"You're one of those heroes now," he says in the scant space between them, near to a whisper, though it's hardly needed. Beyond the thin walls of the office space, the garage is in operation, the sounds of machines and their mechanics echoing back and forth.

She shrugs in response, tips her hand back and forth. Hero-adjacent would be a pithy, but accurate, response; she's just not sure it would come out right.

"It's different than what you were doing before," he says, leaning even further back which isn't what she wants at all! But he takes her hands in his and that's an okay consolation prize, she supposes. "Protecting your block from pendejos is one thing, but you're on the news now. You're in bright spandex and everything."

She crinkles her nose in protest: she doesn't wear spandex. She just wears normal clothes. It's not her fault her powers manifests as flowing green lights.

"No, no, you're right. I'm getting off track," he says, smoothing his thumbs over the back of her hands. It's rough and a patch of black smears across her skin, but it's warm. She likes it.

From the way she thinks this conversation is going, she's going to miss it.

"You'll always have a home here," Edmundo says, and when he leans in, he presses his forehead to hers in a deliberately chaste way, "But you're outgrowing us, and I can't keep you chained down."

She can't say he's wrong.

She doesn't try to kiss him again--they've already had their final goodbye kiss, even if she didn't know it for what it was at the time. But if she tightens her return grip, hoping to press the shape of her hands into his, well. He doesn't say anything about that, at least.

---

She kisses Maya because she loves her and, also, Tetsuki might very well never see her again--either because they will be separated on opposite sides of an inter planar barrier or Tetsuki will be dead.

Maya kisses back because she loves Tetsuki, too... but perhaps isn't sure in what way she loves Tetsuki and thinks that kissing might help her figure it out. And also because, even though Tetsuki isn't saying it out loud, Maya is more than aware that her best friend may very well die and she doesn't want to be a last regret in any way.

It is a lot of emotions and concepts for their first, hesitant kiss to convey.

Luckily, it is not also a last and only kiss, and they greatly improve their communication via kisses in the future.

---

There is no kissing between them. For many reasons, really.

Mainly because intimacy and vulnerability are not luxuries either of them can afford.

Tetsuki has been experimenting with wearing hound-snake venom atop wax coated lips. Azula can literally breathe fire.

And depending on which timeline they're in, they may be trying to kill each other.

So, no. No kissing for them.

---

The first kiss of Team Two actually happens between Naruto and Komadori.

Tetsuki does't understand what's so embarrassing about it but, then again, as mentioned, she wasn't actually involved so...

She promises to talk about that mission only once a year at most.

---

Tetsuki is dripping with river water, mildly concussed, and high off the wave of endorphins that is surviving an apocalyptic, dystopian future when she kisses Kusakabe-senpai for the first time.

Unsurprisingly, this doesn't scare him off.

~

Their romance is nothing like a fairy tale--too steeped in the violence of their work--but it's real and true and everything Tetsuki wants.

She marries a good man, solid and stable, who makes her feel like she can be a good woman, too, if she just wills it.

Every kiss from Tetsuya makes her feel like the heroine of her very own story.

---

She loves Komadori, but not the way he hopes for--still, he is dear to her, and her to him, and it is difficult to be vulnerable in a world of war.

She reaches out, accepting his touch, and lets the intimacy speak for her.

He is a good man; it's unfortunate Tetsuki isn't the right woman.

---

Their's is a lost connection, a hypothetical disaster in the making.

Azula would as soon kiss her as she would gouge her eyes out--they would surely destroy each other.

Maybe, in another life, Tetsuki would even let her try.

---

Love is soft and sweet again, no longer the clawing desperate creature, thread-like bonds gentle yet firm:

Tetsuki doesn't need to say how important Maya is when her actions have already done so, words have never been how she communicates with Hiei, and it's mostly a joke when she threatens to shave off the fox's hair.

---

Tetsuki gets used to poison kisses, everything growing green around her; she's lightheaded from giddiness as much as the toxins, luxuriating in the sensation.

Or maybe it's the sound of machinery, oil streaked across her skin; or the view of the stars from outside the atmosphere, breathless but not suffocating.

Now she's a heroine in more than just feeling.

~

A/N: Or, some quick three sentence fic about Tetsuki being in love?

After she dies, she feels pretty embarrassed. Humbled, really, kneeling in front of the monolith that is Koenma's desk.

To her side, a bunch of ogres wrestle a shouting, flailing demon to the floor, dog piling him into submission before dragging him away to a door she can hear vague screams from, a hint of brimstone wafting on heated air.

She kneels, patient and sheepish.

She thought she had a few more years until she died.

///

When Genkai makes a call for her apprentice, Tetsuki gets an invitation to the trials.

It's not actually meant for her--or, at least, not specifically meant for the granddaughter of Hisae Kaiza, Genkai's former teammate--just a general invitation sent to anyone with a certain level of spiritual ability.

Tetsuki's spiritual ability is not the problem.

Grandmother doesn't say anything when she receives the invitation, nor does she say anything when Tetsuki goes on the day of the trials.

It's not a betrayal.

Tetsuki will never be Genkai's apprentice, but that doesn't mean she won't have a say in who will.

///

It would be terribly convenient if the student Grandmother was looking for was Maya.

Unfortunately that is not the case.

Maya's problem is that whenever she tries to realize or remember anything to do with the spirit world or even her own spiritual ability--which isn't as strong as Tetsuki's, but decent all the same--fucking Shuichi Minamino's fucking amnesia pollen quickly wipes the thought from her mind.

If she had the training, Maya could cure herself of the pollen, but in order to be trained she'd have to remember more than five minutes of what Grandmother has to teach her.

It's an untenable situation and a complete fucking nightmare.

Still, it's not Maya's fault and Tetsuki isn't going to give up on her only friend.

Hisae Kaiza's calligraphy school is, in certain circles, well-renowned--just not in the world of professional, traditional calligraphy.

No, Hisae Kaiza's calligraphy school is far more prestigious than that.

After all, no other school teaches its students how to mold the universe to their will.

///

She never did calligraphy in her first life: it wasn't practical enough for her and so she went another route--aikido she did to spar with Ryohei, but archery had always been for herself.

A bow, an arrow, a target in sight; only one chance to make a mark.

She hasn't felt peace like this in a long time.

///

Grandmother doesn't care for the spirit world--it's taken so much from her, she'd rather die than fall for Enma's false promises again--but the human world is still hers to protect.

Or, at least, have Tetsuki protect it on her behalf.

"Hmph, mind control bugs, how unimaginative," Grandmother scoffs, handing over a stack of ofuda and sending her off like a child on her first day of school, "There you go, my dear, and if you find those other students of mine send them my way."

///

She doesn't care about Shuichi Minamino's true nature. She was friends with the host of a kyuubi--a single tail kitsune isn't even a blip on her radar.

If anything, it's his human side that's the problem.

///

Maya Kitajima is her best friend: she only has the one friend, so it's not a very difficult position to achieve.

"There's something about him," Maya sighs dreamily, while Tetsuki does the same in a far more exasperated manner--it's fine, she won't remember it in five minutes, "As if maybe in another life we might have had a fateful encounter."

Tetsuki knows all about other lives: Maya's situation has less to do with reincarnation and everything to do with the amnesia pollen that Shuichi Minamino dosed her with last year.

~

A/N: a few three-sentence scenes from Multiphenomenal because I don't have any more prompts to fill :(

"I do not jump at Enma's command anymore," Grandmother says, leaning back in her chair. The brakes are on, Tetsuki notes, so there is no fear of it shifting backwards. "Nor will I do so at at his pup's."

The young woman before them inhales sharply, surprised and indignant. The old woman does not react.

Tetsuki stays where she is, by Grandmother's side, standing and ready.

"Do what you will, Genkai, but don't drag me back into it." For all her physical frailty, Grandmother is fierce, fearsome. Tetsuki has lived for longer, technically--collected more years under her spiritual belt--but she has much to learn, still.

"I've lost enough."

///

Grandfather built this house for Grandmother fifty years ago, traditional except for all of ramps discretely placed around to make the entire building accessible.

And the reiki-proof training room in the basement.

Neither were needed until about two decades ago--the former for Grandmother, the latter for Tetsuki.

"I'm not sure what you are, my dear," Grandmother says, as Tetsuki unleashes her power just to test her new body's limits.

She hasn't hit any yet.

"But I'm sure you'll be phenomenal."

///

Grandmother runs a calligraphy school out of the house.

Or that's the cover anyway.

She's searching for a student. A particular student.

Oh, anyone can learn what Grandmother has to teach--Tetsuki herself has picked up a few of the ofuda patterns, faint memories of Komadori's fuinjutsu ramblings acting as a foundation--but only one student will master it.

"Maybe Kuwabara's grandchild," Grandmother says, "the older one," she clarifies, somewhat needlessly.

Tetsuki has heard about the younger Kuwabara grandchild: talented and surprisingly cunning he may be, but Grandmother's abilities are not for him.

"And plus, I've heard that old bastard found a student of his own amongst those Igo players. Some young hothead with no connections to the spirit world... supposedly."

///

School was easy before.

Well, academically, it's still easy--her lives might have been different, but classes might as well be the same--but socially?

"Kaiza-san," says Shuichi Minamino, heartthrob of the school and current pain in her ass, "I've heard your Grandmother teaches calligraphy; I'm interested in learning. Is it okay if I visit your house after school?"

This fucking fox. She should have let him die.

"There's a calligraphy club here at school," she says instead of electrocuting him into a crisp.

Some of their classmates take the opportunity to cut in, "We're part of the calligraphy club, Shuichi-kun!"

"Oh yes, Shuichi-kun, we'd be very... open to you joining us..."

Tetsuki rolls her eyes, wishing she didn't have to listen this excruciating conversation. But, alas, this is her desk and class is going to start soon.

Any minute now, please.

She'd rather still be fighting demons than this.

~

A/N: uh... here's a thing because it won't leave me alone. So... one of Tetsuki's later lives in which she's in the Yu Yu Hakusho 'verse. I don't have very much of it, but here are some details that I do have so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Enjoy?