drama, trauma, and the joy of writing

"Do you have any suggestions otherwise?" Her mask flushes a ripe crimson and she stammers, mouth and eyes twisting in indignant and impotent silent rage. She sputters wordlessly so Eito decides to alleviate her embarassment—because Nozomi would. "It's fine, Kurara. I like these subjects. This isn't like homework or anything. We have a whole library full of books and I picked these out."

(Nozomi taking a stack of medical journals and treatises out of the Library, clutching them to her chest like they're an anchor. She meets his eyes, her own wide and wild behind the distortion of his glasses. She looks sick—more sick than normal—and her mouth works around some memory of vomit. Then she hurries off and Eito saunters into the Library behind her, his prey already picked out for the day.)

"If you say so." She didn't sound like she believed him but it hardly matters. "I'm gonna put these up and then get some food. If I see Kyoshika I'll pass your message on."

"Thank you."

"You're most welcome." With that haughty response she leaves and it's just Eito and Moko.

Eito and the thing pretending to be Moko.

It's good at what it does. Nobody—especially not any of the second campus corps, who would know her better than those who never once saw her in person—can even tell the difference. The thing is...it's very hard to fool someone who has spent his entire life lying to people and pretending to be less dangerous than he actually is.

Her breathing is low and even. Perfectly even. Perfectly shallow. Sure, it hitches from time to time, but the impossible perfection is a dead giveaway that she's not actually asleep. And, if she's not actually asleep, why hasn't she said anything to any of her so-called friends?

Why does she keep up the ruse?

The logical conclusion to that question is: it, like Eito and Nozomi, is not what it says it is. It is something—likely an Invader Commander—pretending to be Moko.

To what end then? Infiltration is either sabotage or information gathering. It staying immobile and 'unconscious' might be a byproduct of Nozomi's demand that they nurse 'Moko' to health creating an atmosphere of undue and unwanted scrutiny regarding her movement and personality. Does it think it can't play at being Moko well enough to fool the second campus corps? Does it worry that it will be found out and devoured?

So it's likely laying low to feel out the mood and determine the best course of action. It probably wants information and it wants whatever is in the Defense Room and it wants all of the Special Defense Unit dead.

Eito can provide an opportunity and the knowledge to take advantage of said opportunity. All he has to do is talk to Nozomi's 'friend' as though he is taking care of 'her' while she's 'sick'.

So talk he does.

(He had, at the start, considered smothering Moko to save himself the trouble of one more bothersome human among the Special Defense Unit. Unfortunately, Yugamu is good at medical things and likely could perform a fairly decent autopsy if he did smother someone to death. If Moko disappeared during his watch, he would come under intense scrutiny, so he couldn't just kill her and dispose of the body in the Wall of Fire. That's even assuming that the Revive-o-Matic didn't have some kind of autopsy function to it, if it didn't try and revive her the second she died on-campus.)

(And then he realized she was pretending and he figured he could use that.)

(If 'Nozomi' had an alibi, then Eito wouldn't be suspected.)

(It made spending time watching over her...tolerable.)

"I don't know how to feel about the prisoner," Eito opens up with. He hasn't had the chance to personally talk at it about the Invader they captured and imprisoned so it's best to start with some kind of baseline. A...carrot for it to make a hasty or early move; to rescue its comrades. "We, um...took an Invader Commander prisoner. It surrendered to us when we forced it out of its transformation. And it...looks like a person? It's unsettling to think about keeping a person in a cage, like some kind of animal."

Not that that's stopped humanity before. The road to 'civilization' is paved with slavery and inhumane treatments of those they consider 'lesser'. It is in their nature.

He bites his tongue and continues on as Nozomi would, pleasant and conversational. "Sumino says that we'll have to decide what to do with it sooner or later but I'm worried that someone might...decide it doesn't deserve to live and kill it. Even if Ginzaki is the one with the key—especially because Ginzaki has the key, actually." It's an especially unkind sentiment for Nozomi but it's unlikely this Invader knows the exact nuances of Nozomi's speech to call him out on it. "Ginzaki is one of the people from this school, the main campus," he explains to the sleeping 'Moko' as if 'she' would like to get to know them personally, "and he's...he's sweet. A bit of a pushover with self-esteem issues but maybe you can help with that?"

("Moko was— is. Moko is really cheerful and good at supporting others." Nozomi had spoken like the words were fishhooks in her throat, catching on flesh and tearing as they exited her mouth. "She...gave us hope. Made it easier to try and make do. She's why we got this far.")

"He could really use your advice. I'm worried that Maruko might bully him into giving up the key so he can be weird with the prisoner." Surprising everyone, Gaku has been pretty normal about the prisoner looking like a—Eito has to assume—traditionally attractive young woman, but he knows that Nozomi specifically has issues with the way he speaks about women, so it's not too out of left field to have him catch a stray while discussing his 'concerns' regarding holding a hostage. "It never leaves his person. Maybe it doesn't hurt that Ginzaki is sturdier than everyone else, his hemoanima making him capable of enduring blows that would knock most of us unconscious, but..." He trails off, leaves the thought unspoken.

Hopefully the Invader picks up on the implications.

Judging by the way that it seems to have forgotten to breathe at all, it must be forming connections all its own. Plans it is formulating to execute at a later date.

Then, to cover its sudden silence, it snuffles and sighs, shifting in place.

How cute.

"The cages—there's two of them, by the way—are in the Courtyard. You'd like that place, I think. It's...I think it was supposed to be some kind of biotropic garden or preservation space because it has climate adjustment and various weather systems and is atmospherically controlled with pneumatic doors to account for pressure and the like. Could be nice to have a picnic there when you're better?" Then the hard part. Eito stands up and adjusts the blankets around Moko, careful to make as little skin-contact as possible, but lingers for a moment too long.

He steels himself and brushes her bangs away from her forehead, the back of his knuckles grazing her forehead. Then he makes a concerned noise and leans forward, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead. "I hope you're not running a fever." He knows—as would Nozomi—that Nozomi's body temperature is lower than average, so the heat of 'Moko's' skin is normal for her. An average human temperature. Still, he has to do this because it's an excellent way for this Invader to truly create an opportunity to escape and possibly ruin everything humanity plans to do here. "We don't have antipyretics here so we'd have to forage for the ingredients. The nearest pharmacy ruins are a day's round trip—assuming that we can even find what we need—and if we want to make our own between myself and Omokage, we still would have to forage for quite some time. We can't afford the distraction between the defensive battles and the prisoner's presence already causing a slight divide, not to mention the fact that we're keeping an eye on you. If you were to suddenly break into a fever, we might actually be spread too thin; so thin we might have to forgo caring for you, even if only for a day or two."

Eito is unsure what all the Invader pretending to be Moko is capable of. If it's a shapeshifter, then perhaps it can influence its temperature to such a degree that it can force a fever. If it isn't and this is some kind of technological cloaking, then surely it can dupe a dangerous internal temperature and fool even the most careful of the humans and machinery in the Last Defense Academy.

All it has to do is try.

Take the bait.

Be a problem.

("Do you think..." Nozomi trails off, her face pinching in deep thought, heart on her sleeve visible for anyone looking.)

("Do I think what?")

("The prisoner..." Again, she fails to finish her thought but it's obvious how she feels. It's so obvious that it's nauseating. How dare she look that way while in his body, wearing his face.)

(Nausea. Panic. Fear. Horror. Concern. The idea of taking a prisoner is already a step too far, even with the hundred day war they've been conscripted into. The idea that the prisoner looks human—looks like a person to everyone—makes it worse. It's abhorrent. Monstrous.)

(Perfectly human of them.)

(He wonders what she sees when she looks at the prisoner; what all drove her away from that battlefield, hand pressed to her heart and her mouth. He wonders what horrors she sees in the eyes of that Invader Commander.)

(He doesn't ask.)

(He just smiles at her. "I think it's awful," because it is, "but necessary.")

("Necessary?!" Angry? Affronted, perhaps. Naked disgust drips from every word.)

("It surrendered. Did you want to kill it?" Cruelty is something he wields with surgical precision, a blunt way of speaking he writes off as 'due to his upbringing' but that's a pretty lie to disguise the truth. He simply enjoys finding the small chinks in their armor and prying, making places he can worm his fingers in later. When she shakes her head, stopping to readjust his glasses when the frantic movement jostles them from their normal resting spot, he offers her a gentle smile. "Then prisoner it is. We can't let it go because it will tell whatever is above it in the command structure about what it learned from its assault. We need them to be ignorant of our workings so the only possible option is prisoner of war. And, all things considered, we're treating it rather well, are we not?")

(She didn't argue with him after that. Good.)

(But the resentment and discontent remains. He can see her seething, the rot setting in. All he has to do is let the spores fruit and the whole structure will collapse soon enough.)

The fake Moko doesn't move after this. It doesn't do anything but gently breathe, quietly faking sleep.

Be that way.

Eito sits back down in the chair at the foot of Moko's bed, curls his legs underneath him, and cracks open the book on medicinal plants where he left his bookmark. If it wasn't going to be useful, he could wait.

He's very good at waiting.

And he knows his plan is the safe bet among a million low-odd plans for infiltration. The Invader will see reason or it will spend the remaining fifty days of their service pretending to be in a coma until one or more of them bite the bullet and put 'Moko' out of her misery to see if the Revive-o-Matic will fix whatever is broken.

Nothing is broken. It will just die, and for what?

So he can wait. He has all the time in the world and rot flourishes best with stagnation.

("Just...can you make sure she's okay?" Nozomi's piteous expression of plaintive desire on his face is...saccharine. Like hospital jello, it sticks in his throat on the way down. "I—")

("Of course," he lies through her teeth. "I am honored that you trust me with your dear friend's health.")

(A smile, bright as a sunrise, blooms across from him. Has he ever smiled like that before? Or is that an expression he has forgotten how to wear, hidden beneath platitudes and simplicity? "Thank you so much Aotsuki.")

("Feel better Nozomi." He waves her off, watches her walk away, and then lets his hand fall to his side.)

(Resentment stews in his gut. He crushes it under his heel.)

(He has better things to do but if needs be—)

(He can play house for a little while.)

—

"And you're sure we don't have any?"

"For the love of murder— yes! I have checked four different times. We have no antipyretics."

"What good is a big fucking building like this, with all it's expensive bullshit, if there's no way to synthesize a fucking fever reducer at will?!"

"We can, it just requires components—"

"So does putting a body back together from blood and genetic prints but the damn Revive-o-Matic does perfectly fine every goddamn time. Why does a fever have to be worse than dying?!"

"Mayhaps we implore Takumi-dono for permission to quest for the medicine we need?"

"An Oosuzuki does not need to ask fucking permission from anyone, let alone a poor plebian like Sumino—"

"We agreed that we would concede to their command structure as part of our merger, did we not? Therefore, Takumi-dono is our superior if we speak of things as one would a military."

"Kurara, you have to stop yelling. It's not going to make anything better and, like the fever, I'm sure poor Moko has a killer headache to pair with dehydration."

"Killer. Ha! Pick your next words carefully, Omokage."

"I'm just saying—"

"Surely Takumi-dono would know the nearest place to start looking and—"

"Guys?!" The arguing stops as abruptly as it had started, the clamor leaving a ringing emptiness in its wake akin to a receding trough foretelling the destructive arrival of a tsunami. Everyone turns to stare at the person interjecting and immediately Kurara is back to being aggressive.

"Oh, look, the team leader is here to give us permission to save our friend's life. How magnanimous of him."

Yugamu just sighs and shakes his head. "Sorry for her."

Despite the furrows in his brow, Takumi seems mostly unbothered. "No worries. I know she can just...be like this sometimes. And things are extra stressful right now, aren't they?"

"Between our new pet prisoner and Moko being sick, yeah." Yugamu's visible eye squints in something Eito has come to understand is amusement. It has a different tilt than hunger or anger and the way his lips curl mean it isn't a threat, just a fact. "You could say that."

"Takumi-dono!" Kyoshika closes the distance between the two of them, pressing her forehead to the ground in a perfect dogeza, feet tucked under her and hands flat in front of her, deference obvious. "Would you please allow us to go find the medicine we need to cure our ailing friend?"

Discomfort is chased by understanding and horror. Takumi scratches at his cheek and pulls on his hair a bit as he thinks, gnawing on the inside of his cheek. "You don't - you don't have to be like that, Magadori. I'm not—"

"Aren't you our leader?" Kurara bites and Takumi flinches away.

"I mean—"

"She's asking for permission. Isn't that something you get off to? Just let us fucking go!" The threat of violence lies naked for everyone to hear.

In response, Yugamu steps between Kurara and Takumi, grabbing Kurara's shoulder and moving her away so that—should she take a swing at him—he has space to try and flee before she inevitably decks him. "We would like to go forage the necessary ingredients or possibly salvage some antipyretics from the ruins nearby. Do you think we can afford to split our forces?"

"Uh..." The sincerity of the request gives him pause but Takumi recovers nicely. "Are you sure you want to leave Mojiro behind unattended?" As Kurara bristles again, he continues on with as much velocity as he can muster. "I think we can maybe afford to send two small groups out but...we don't know when we might get attacked again."

"That's fair," Yugamu nods. "Should we just pick a handful of us?"

"One of you should probably stay back and keep an eye on Mojiro; make sure she doesn't get worse."

"I volunteer!" Kyoshika leaps up from her dogeza, hand in the air as though she's offering herself for classroom duty. "I doubt I will be helpful in identifying or discovering any relevant materials but I am capable of caring for my dear friend."

"So, what, a group of two and one poor fucker on their own? Or do we just go in one group and cover less ground?" Less aggressive but no less irritated, Kurara clicks her tongue at Takumi.

Who, against all odds, has a response for her. "I'll go with you."

What?

"What?!"

Takumi gives Kurara a weak, pathetic smile—the self-effacing one that Eito is becoming more than familiar with, the one that fills his veins with boiling rage and makes him gnash his teeth with a barely contained desire to bite down until he draws blood—and tugs on his hair again. "It's not safe for anyone to go out on their own but also two groups are going to cover way more ground than just one. The less time we spend searching, the better."

"So our glorious leader is going to offer his hands to help bear our burden? How lucky we are!" Now even Eito can tell how much Kurara is posturing.

He just gives her a thin placating smile. "Kurara," he warns, "we should be grateful. Thank you, Sumino." The first time in a long time that Eito—or, more likely, Nozomi—has initiated conversations with Takumi outside of combat communication. The effect on his mood is instantaneous and immediately visible.

He shines so bright it's like looking at the sun, grinning like he won the lottery.

As quickly as it comes, the smile is covered with a serious and stern look. "Meet up at the Entrance Hall in an hour. Get food, get ready, and be prepared for an exploration, okay?"

"Aye-aye, dear leader." Yugamu purrs, leering at Takumi as he slinks off with Kyoshika to check up on Moko one last time before he leaves the campus.

Kurara just clicks her tongue in irritation and stomps off, heels clacking as she goes, leaving Eito and Takumi alone with each other.

Eito makes the first move. "Thank you."

"Hm?"

"For letting us go get something for Moko. And for joining us." For being stupid enough to put your head on the chopping block without looking up at the guillotine blade. "You didn't have to."

"Well...I...," he can't formulate a word in the face of 'Nozomi' talking to him, all of his average intelligence melting into grey goop and leaking out his dribbling mouth, "I couldn't just say no?"

"You could," he refutes, "but you didn't. You're in a position to be any kind of leader you want but you choose to be kind and to work with us. Thank you for that, too."

"I—"

Instead of allowing Takumi to continue to try and formulate a conversational thread that doesn't garrote him, Eito just leaves, cutting the whole thing short en passant.

They'll have more than enough time to dance this waltz when Takumi inevitably pairs off with him for the search. He needs to save his energy.

There's no guarantee that both of them will make it back from this trip. Maybe this time, when Eito beats him upside the head, there won't be a whole other school of child soldiers who rescue him from the blunt force trauma and dehydration and starving.

What a novel thought.

—

"I think...there might be something like a corner store down the street here?"

Eito does his best to keep his ragged breathing consistent and even as he hikes, lungs aching as they scale the haphazard rubble that coats the road they're on. "O-oh?"

"Yeah. I remember seeing it when I was looking for a needle and thread for Ginzaki." What all had Shouma needed that required a needle and thread again? Something to do with convincing him to fight, most likely. Most of Takumi's strange little anecdotes and solo operations are built around convincing any one of the initial noncombatants to join the fray. Speaking of—

"Medical needle and thread?"

Takumi pauses and turns to look back at him, brows furrowing in confusion. "Is - is there a difference?"

"There is." A great difference. "But if it worked out, then...it worked out." They fall back into relative silence as they walk, Eito trying to focus on the beating of Nozomi's weak heart and the pushing of her weak lungs, mind busy trying to find a way to turn this situation around.

In—Takumi is right there, it would be so easy to paralyze him and slit his throat without a second thought—and out—but everyone would ask questions and Eito would have to go out of his way to dispose of the body without access to the same type of consumption he used with Hiruko. In—Takumi adores and obsesses over Nozomi, so coming up with a plausible story that sells how brave and courteous he had been would be child's play—and out—Eito is unsure if he can force Nozomi's disaffected face to properly convey the grief and guilt of living when someone gave themselves up for you properly, even if that had been part of his initial plan regarding Nozomi's friends. In—there's a non-zero chance that Kurara and Yugamu cross their paths and if Eito doesn't look suitably terrified and harrowed by the 'experience', it will end poorly for him—and out—that's not even accounting for if he can kill him fast enough, the amount of abuse a hemoanima-strengthened body can take magnitudes beyond the average person's. In—he is exhausted and there is a horrible headache brewing in the back of his skull, against the inside of his eyesockets—and out—his body feels like he's been dipped in concrete and it's finally settling.

"Kirifuji?" Eito startles and turns his attention to Takumi, who has crested the latest mountain of asphalt and rebar and glass and is turned back to look at him. "Are you alright?"

Nozomi's body is best suited for fast exertion, battles wearing her out, but no more or less than anyone else. She's good at sprinting and quick movements but the moment she starts pushing herself, exhaustion compounds into agony. A hike like this is drilling a hole in the bottom of a bucket and wondering why there's no water in the well as you draw and draw and draw. Infuriating.

Eito grits his teeth in a dull approximation of a smile and answers, "Don't mind me. I'm just a little worn out from worrying about Moko. I'll be alright."

Something in the set of Takumi's shoulders shifts and he refuses to move, waiting for him to catch up. "You don't look alright." How astute. "Have you been sleeping well?"

No. "I'm fine, Sumino." The rebuttal is a little terse, his genuine irritation leaking through a bit. Takumi winces and pulls back but continues to hover in his orbit, hands pulled against his chest as though he wants to reach out and touch him to confirm he's real. To confirm this is actually happening.

If Takumi touches him, he is going to slam the stock of Nozomi's gun into his nose and not stop until shards of his skull are in his brain, plausible deniability be damned.

"You—"

"There's just a lot going on right now and I'm a little spread thin, is all." Drop it. "You'll have to forgive me for being a little spacey."

He flinches and draws in on himself. An expression that Eito can only describe as guilt crosses his face and lingers like a shroud. When it begins to clear, beneath that is a strange determined frown. "That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" Takumi doesn't know Nozomi like the reserve corps do. He doesn't know when she's being more aggressive than usual. He knows her about as well as Eito does—although Eito can argue that he knows her better since he's not constantly conflating her with some girl in the Tokyo Residential Complex that she superficially resembles—so he doesn't need to be careful. It's not like Takumi can call him out on his bullshit.

"You just..." He waffles, indecisive. He's always so damn indecisive. Eito hates that about him—more than most things, actually. If he made a choice, if he committed, then he would at least have some kind of intent or purpose. As it is, his crimes are being human and being an indecisive little brat about everything. "...you avoid the Courtyard."

What is he actually on about? "Wouldn't you? We took someone prisoner!"

"We had to!" Conviction, finally, but at what cost? The hero stands in front of the prisoner and says 'this is for the greater good' and the ignorant masses nod their heads in mindless agreement like bobble-headed sheep. "None of us wanted to kill her and we couldn't just let her go! Even you said—"

"I know what I said." He had been the one to point out that letting it go was a bad idea. It was, and not just because he wanted it to have time to gather more information on their inner workings before he, himself, let it free. There was a non-zero chance that it just deserted in its entirety as the first Commander to genuinely beg for its life. It was a coward and he didn't want to let its fear make decisions for them. "But I can still disagree with the morals of holding someone hostage in a cage like some kind of animal. So I avoid the Courtyard because it's distressing to see."

He frowns, pretty face wrenching into an ugly expression of irritation, wrinkles and furrows creating a topographical map of his hypocrisy. "That's not it, though. You avoid me and I get that. I - the way I acted when we first met was...bad." An understatement. "But I'm trying and I would really like it if you met me halfway."

Ha. "I don't owe you anything, Sumino."

"Of course not but—"

"And while I appreciate that you've been letting me have my space so I can try and come to terms with things, do you really think this is any better? Blaming me for my discomfort and then assuming that, what, I'm doing this to hurt you? Spite you? We are at war, Sumino, and I am at the most risk because unlike the rest of you: I am not immortal. I can die in ways that matter. So forgive me if I'm too busy maintaining my weapon and armor, keeping our potions and defensive measures stocked, exercising so that I can keep up with the rest of you superhuman soldiers, all to have to deal with emotional stress on top of that."

He falls silent. Deathly so.

Maybe that was a step too far but there's been a rising ache in his bones that dug its teeth into Eito's brain and wrenched the kindness out of his grasp, holding it high above his head in a taunting manner. He can barely think around the lancing in his skull to try and cover for his attitude. Instead he just waits for the silence to take them both.

When Takumi speaks up again, he sounds sullen. "I didn't mean to insinuate that you owed me anything." How chivalrous. "I just...worry about you."

"Because of Karua." It's mean but—

"Because of Kirifuji." What? Eito stiffens and tries his best to hide the horror that flushes the pain out with ice, chasing the fog away with a deep worry. Does he know? Does he know? Has he realized? Does he know?!

"What?"

"Karua is...she's someone important to me, yeah, and you look a lot like her. A lot a lot. But you're not Karua, you're Kirifuji, and I've been thinking about what that means to me. I've been trying to separate the two of you in my head and pinpoint what Kirifuji is." Oh. Thank god.

"What conclusion have you come to then?"

Takumi waits for him to clamber over the ruins they're scaling, hand outstretched if he wants the help, a gentle, wistful look on his face. His hair is backlit by the sun, golden rays making it look like fire rings his head, an eclipse. "Kirifuji is someone who helps her friends at the detriment to herself. She's caring but protective, willing to take hits if it means that someone else doesn't have to and even more willing to enact preventative measures that others might not find as tasteful. She's a healer, yes, but she's not weak. She tries harder than anyone else to contribute and sometimes burns the candle at both ends to get things done at a level she finds satisfactory. She's diligent and serious but not without a sense of humor. She has wonderful friends and does her best to play peace-keeper—even when she knows someone is in the wrong—because discord is more upsetting than the initial argument. And she's not above telling me when I'm wrong, in no uncertain terms."

Not all of that is Nozomi. Most of that—most of the anger and bitterness and vitriol—is Eito's take on Nozomi but to think that Takumi had been watching him that closely—

It makes his borrowed skin crawl.

He opts to let the silence of the world eat them alive rather than actually talk any further. He would rather claw his borrowed skin off and pull his borrowed eyes out of his borrowed skull than actually engage with this absolutely empty drivel.

As they make their way further and further into the ruins of the town, Takumi does them both a courtesy and doesn't try to engage in any more talking. He reads the mood perfectly and makes the wise decision to let it go, proving that even half-concussed animals can be taught to drop it when their life is in danger.

Eito does his best to not let his gaze linger on him any longer than he has to.

One of the downsides to being subject to an average human's twisted perception of their species as a whole is that he's forced to deal with a picturesque ideal version of how they look. His brain is as-of-yet unused to not seeing them as the monsters they truly are and every sideways glance at their mundane features sends him into a hysterical spiral of nausea and awe.

Sumino's hair is striking against the sky, a dandelion puff burning roman-candle-bright, golden light forming a halo that casts him angelic. His blue eyes are rich sapphires that scan the horizon, thalassic pools devouring the deep hues meant for nature, delicate crimson lashes fluttering and shielding them from the sun's harsh glare. His shoulders are broad, statuesque, and despite his average build, there's something almost historically impressive about him—roman marble stern, David with his sling, Atlas holding up the sky—that sells itself in the way he holds himself when he isn't doubting every breath he takes. His stride, while slower than usual for Eito's convenience, is determined and propels him forward in a way that makes it seem as though not even a mountain would halt his advance.

He's something to behold and Eito is alone with him. He's the center of the way the Last Defense Academy runs as a social circle and a militia and his guard is down. He's astute and a problem for himself and Nozomi both and he doesn't think that perhaps he should keep an eye on the person who just bit his head off, foolishly and blindly trusting him.

He should kill Takumi right now. It's the best course of action. In fact—

Water splashes against his face. Eito is suddenly aware of the way that his ever-present nauseating pain has peaked into an almost blinding feeling. The sky is unnaturally dark.

Ah. Right. Weather.

"Shit." Takumi's hissing irritation cuts through the pattering sound of rain falling on them. "We should go back."

Now would be a perfect time to—

A crack of bright light and a rolling cacophony of noise tears through the world. Eito startles but Takumi yelps aloud, a horrid noise like he's in pain. Then a flush of red heats his cheeks, highlighting the almost invisible speckling that dust his cheekbones—freckles, they're called, a byproduct of being under a real sun that some of the Special Defense Unit have experienced during their period of service. When the embarrassment passes—water matting his hair to his forehead, stray strands curling against his jaw like climbing ivy—he turns his eyes upward at the dark clouds above them and frowns.

"We should find shelter." What vile thoughts are passing through his head regarding Nozomi? What nonsense is he thinking about with the two of them alone, away from the school?

Eito swallows his fury and revulsion and just gently inclines his head in agreement. "Judging by how quickly this came out of nowhere—" the pain in his head spikes and tears into his senses with another flash of bright light and roaring noise, "we should be able to wait this out without wasting too much time or ending our day outside the Wall of Fire."

Takumi nods in response and picks a direction. "I think I saw a building with an intact roof over this way." And off they go.

A more perfect opportunity could not have presented itself to Eito in this moment. With the inclement weather, the light and sound, and the sheets of water lowering their visibility, it would be almost comical to grab him by the back of his Class Armor and shove him to the ground while claiming innocence. Easier still to blow his brains out against the wet rock, letting the rain wash away any evidence after he's gone out of his way to drag the corpse to one of the many patches of burning Undying Flame that dot the city like vibrant violent landmarks.

And if anyone asks...well the weather had suddenly gotten really bad so what was 'Nozomi' to do when Takumi and 'herself' got separated looking for medicine for Moko? If he showed up dead days later then that's an accident. It's nobody's fault, really!

But something stills his hand. Something like the pain curling daggers into his eyes and brain. Something like the aching of his borrowed limbs and the protestations of his borrowed lungs. Something like the fluttering of his weak borrowed heart whenever he looks at Takumi, the memory of high-gloss photographs of sculptures from a bygone era interposed over his form, as if Nozomi's traitorous human senses were trying to protect her so-called friends.

The shelter Takumi finds is...passable. It's some kind of bombed-out, abandoned specialized goods store of some kind. Having scavenged from the ruins of the store, Takumi and Eito both manage to coax a small fire to life, gnawing on some kind of—likely expired—ration bar that tastes like cardboard soaked itself in vanilla extract. The wind shrieks outside, whipping small pinpricks of rain into where they're sitting but it's never enough to get them wet, even as they huddle around their small fire to dry off. Eito takes a moment to undo his hair—having dispelled his Artificial Class Armor for ease of access—and wring it out before quickly plaiting it into a loose approximation of Nozomi's usual hairstyle.

He can feel Takumi's eyes on him as he reactivates his Artificial Class Armor, feeling less naked when he has some kind of protection.

Takumi, meanwhile, has dispelled his Class Armor—far away from their resting point so the splatter of blood didn't ruin what little safety they had—and is pulling his jacket and sweatshirt off to wring out and dry by the fire. Eito just blankly stares at him, one eyebrow arched as he tries to communicate how this looks from the outside.

Is he really that dense?

He must be because when Takumi catches his eye, he frowns like he's unsure why he's being given the third degree. "What?"

"Are you sure you want to strip down when it's just the two of us?" If he sounds sharper than normal, it's just due to being wet and trapped in a room with Takumi. His patience is being pressed to its limit and he doesn't have the energy to play nice. After all: Takumi has already acknowledged that 'Nozomi' is sharp and unwilling to let him passively get away with things if she can call him out on it.

Red creeps across his face and his bare shoulders tense, creeping up towards his flushing ears. "Wh-what?! I didn't— I would never!"

"I'm aware," he placates, words a blunt force against Takumi's pathetic stammering, "but if Kurara and Omokage were to find us, any of us in a state of undress would be cause for concern, wouldn't it?"

The threat of Kurara is enough to get him to wrap his jacket back around him to have some kind of layer between his skin and 'Nozomi's', snapping the buttons closed with a sheepish kind of horror. "Sorry..."

"You don't need to apologize to me about that." In fact, he would prefer it if he didn't. The less they talk, the better, but it's hard to think around the way his head hurts and the shrieking of the wind seems to be competing with the cacophony of the storm to make it impossible to hold any kind of idea for more than a few seconds. "It was more for your benefit than mine." Because Kurara likes Nozomi and she hates any of the boys sans Yugamu.

"Thanks for that." He lets out a little self-deprecating chuckle and pulls his jacket closer around himself, picking at his sleeve.

The space between them falls silent, the sound of the weather and the fire the only noise in the emptiness.

Eventually Takumi breaks and opens his mouth. "Kirifuji?"

"Hm?" What now?

"I wanted to...apologize."

"For?" He knows but he won't let Takumi escape the gut-wrenching agony of trying to put such difficult thoughts to words. It's a small harm he can inflict on him without exerting himself.

"How we met." Hm... "And how I've treated you since. I know that it made you uncomfortable—makes you uncomfortable—but I really do want to try and, if not be your friend, form some kind of bond with you. Even if it's just like...a bond of camaraderie or whatever I just—" He trails off, gnawing at his lower lip. Blood beads where he's torn it open with his worrying, the red smearing as he continues on with the self-soothing motion.

How to spin this? How did Nozomi put it again? "It...felt like you were looking at someone else. And that - that happens sometimes but it was...awful to have you call me someone else's name and be so attached to that person that you were attached to me by proxy. It made me feel invisible. Like a ghost."

The way he presses his bleeding lips closed, thin lines of crimson and concern and shame, paints a perfect picture of penitence. He genuinely feels remorse for how he's acted until now.

Of course this isn't news to Eito. Takumi—whether it's this cherubic vision of humanity or the truth that only his eyes see—is a painfully honest person. He couldn't lie if his life was on the line, his every emotion splattered across the canvas of his form, echoing in his stance and tone and expressions, in the way his fire used to burn and flash, in the belches of smoke that erupted from his mouth, in the scattershot way that talking with him painted Eito in persistent ash that smelled of burnt flesh. In the tilt of his head that reveals the vulnerable part of his jaw, in the dusting of color that creeps across the bridge of his nose and across the tips of his ears, in the way he pulls and tugs on things to anchor himself, in the picking and gnawing pulling blood from his nailbeds and lips, in the curve of his eyelashes as he looks through them at Eito.

He's painfully earnest and that makes him easy to use. Naivete is a hole in the foundation and Eito has the patience to drip water into it every second he can to wear and erode away at the core of him.

He breaks line of sight and stares at the fire, imagines Takumi's true writhing form convulsing in the hungry element, and tries to beat his thoughts into shape against the pressure and pain and noise. His chest clenches.

"I...can see why that would upset you. That would upset anyone." Saccharine sincerity drips from every word. It's the sweetness of fermentation and rot. Eito refuses to look at him, refuses to feed into the human delusion of beauty, refuses to allow Nozomi's eyes to shape his perception of this wretched thing he's forced to share space with. His hands shake with an emotion he doesn't want to name—not out of fear, but if he clarifies it then it might make a hollow in his chest, and he wants it gone. "If I could go back in time and do that first interaction all over again, I would strive to be better. I want to meet you where you are and...if you're not willing right now then that's okay. I just wanted to communicate that to you before something happened and I wasn't able to."

Because they are at war.

Because Nozomi can die in ways that everyone else can't.

Because, even if he deludes himself with pretty words and posturing, Takumi still sees Karua in Nozomi, and the idea of being separated from her makes him so miserable that he would rather throw away any dignity he might pretend to have just to not be hated by her.

"I appreciate you telling me that. I accept your apology." Maybe it's the way clenching his jaw exacerbates the pressure in his eyes, but Eito chooses to turn his vitriol onto Nozomi instead of Takumi. Spite eases the ache and makes him feel full. "For now, let's say we're acquaintances and comrades in arms and work up from there?"

Silence. The sound of the fire, of the weather, of the wind. Eito makes the mistake of looking up to see what Takumi is doing.

He's smiling at him. It's a gentle smile, small and genuine. Even with the blood bubbling from the split in his lips, even with the way his hair has dried in an untamed cloud-like mess, even with only a jacket and pants on, the firelight paints him in a way that erases the harshness that the war has carved into his countenance.

Eito's heart leaps into his throat, chokes him with its weight and size. It burns, an ember swallowed whole. He pulls in on himself and curls closer to the fire, hands shaking as he grabs at his chest.

Takumi gently drapes his hoodie over his shoulders and sits down by the fire, tending it mindlessly.

Eito doesn't think of much after that, actively dissociating so he doesn't do something that he and Nozomi will both regret.

(Even as Takumi keeps his vulnerable back to him, his guard down, Eito doesn't bother making a move. Something heavy and hot and uncomfortably twisted stills his hand. He can't kill him.)

(Tomorrow, he assures himself, or the day after. Let him come further down this bridge before I burn it from both ends. It'll hurt more if he thinks he's been forgiven - if he thinks his friend is attacking him.)

(It's a logical fallacy to make himself feel better.)

(He doesn't know why he doesn't kill Takumi.)

(All he knows is that, as they sit at the fire and listen to the storm abate, Eito can only think about his parents and their faces.)

(Did they smile at him like this once? Was this an expression they wore before they decided that he wasn't worth the effort? How long did they look at him with such naked affection before it was replaced with irritation and frustration and disappointment?)

(He blames his indecision on the pain and pressure in his head and the way the storm made his borrowed joints lock up and his borrowed bones ache.)

Her reaction to alarms isn't as bad as it was when she was in her own body. This is a small mercy, a tiny gift from whatever being has decided that she and Aotsuki would be tormented like this. That her panic is lessened in exchange for him having to bear the brunt of her body's poor reaction to the horrible memory of that day's traumatic events is...

...she doesn't know how to feel, really. She's just glad she doesn't have to deal with that on top of everything else.

Scrambling to the War Room, she finds everyone's but Sumino—expected—and Aotsuki—also somewhat expected—frowning at the monitors. Steeling herself, she sidles up alongside the least offensive person she could find and asks, "What—?"

"Nuthin'."

She startles as Yakushiji cuts her off, his snout wrinkled in confusion and a barely-contained snarl. "H-huh?"

"There's fuckin' nuthin' there." He gestures at the screen with one of his six massive hands, the movement bringing with it a wave of blistering heat that made her skin prickle. "That's why Oosuzuki n' Omokage n' Kawana're scrubbing through the controls. Tryin' to find somethin' to explain why the hell the damn alarm went off."

A false alarm? Could that even be possible? But wasn't the alarm triggered by something passing through and disturbing the Wall of Fire? How—?

Behind them, the doors flung open and Sumino flickered in, Aotsuki slithering behind him in stuttering bursts of undulating speed. "What—?"

"Fuckall!" Yakushiji, as he had done with Nozomi, interrupts Sumino before he can finish his question.

"What?" Aotsuki's irritation seems tempered by the aftermath of his panic attack. Nozomi can't blame him for being unable to hide how frustrated he is; she also has that problem. Still, his recovery is impressive as he quickly clarifies, "So it was a false alarm?"

"Unclear!" Kurara is doubled over the control system, furiously typing at the keyboard while Kawana and Omokage offer advice and point things out.

"It's looking like something broke the Wall of Fire but—" Kawana cuts herself off and swallows a wave of bile.

Omokage takes over for her while Kurara continues to hammer at the keyboard like it insulted her curry. "But we can't find exactly what just yet."

"Well it's not a defensive battle at the very least, is it?" Aotsuki sidles up alongside Kurara and peers over her shoulder, dripping gelatinous bloody liquid into the soft cavernous holes already formed in her rotting head. "Otherwise we would mobilize the moment Sumino arrived."

"Why me?" Sumino bristles, spires of shadow flaring up like a show of dominance.

"You're always last to show up, dude," Maruko points out. "We have to wait for you." A chorus of agreement beats Sumino's confusion and consternation back to silence.

Then Kurara slams the enter key and shouts in triumph. "Got you!" On the monitors, a singular CCTV feed shows someone in the distance staggering ever forward. Nozomi squints, trying to make out a shape in the mass of purple and blue shadowy goop that makes up their body but the way Kurara, Kyoshika, and Omokage are holding their breath makes her realize who it is quick enough.

"Moko!" Her friends chorus in a mix of delight and horror.

Moko is— she's alive? Moko is alive and—

The figure on the feed staggers and collapses against the dusty earth at the edge of the Wall of Fire. Unbidden, Nozomi pushes away from the monitors and snatches Aotsuki's Infuser, transforming and launching herself close to Moko's location. She isn't thinking about how this looks—Aotsuki rushing to someone's aid when he's never met them and there are four other people who have met her and love her with all of them—because all she can think about is Moko. Moko Moko Moko Moko.

Moko is alive. The Invaders didn't kill her. She's alive and back and Nozomi can see her again and she's alive.

For the first time in forty-some-odd days, Nozomi is grateful.

At the behest (read: demand) of Kurara, Nozomi, Yakushiji, Omokage, Sumino, and Kurara—all transformed—band together to safely carry Moko back to the school and up to the roof, where they all gently deposit her on the bed of the singular spare housing unit. That would have been hers, had she not been waylaid, so it made sense. It's only after everyone else disperses, varying states of worry and confusion coloring their inhuman faces and forms, that Omokage grabs her by the elbow with one of his myriad hands.

"Eito."

She freezes but doesn't react past that, painting her face with a pleasant smile as she turns to look at him. "Yes Yugamu?"

"Why did you rush out to help Moko?" His words crawl up her neck like spiders. She suppresses a shudder.

"Why?" How to spin this? Nozomi would like to say that it's because Moko is someone important to her, someone she cares about and loves with all of her. Nozomi would like to say that Moko is the light of her life and the guilt of her choosing to give herself up so everyone else could live ate her alive every day that followed. Nozomi would like to say that it's because she's Moko. But those aren't answers Aotsuki would give and, for all she would rather not lie to Omokage, she has to. Thankfully, Omokage and the others who came from the second campus don't know Aotsuki half as well as the people on the main campus do, so she can use that to her advantage. "Because she was in trouble and because you seem to care about her quite a bit."

Her answer seems to throw Omokage off-balance for a moment—if the way his pedipalps and mandibles grind and clatter against each other is any indication of his surprise—but he recovers quickly. "Oh?" Even with the layers of cognitive distortion going on, it isn't difficult to pick up on the delight in his voice. "How magnanimous of you."

"You all are our allies and she is your friend." The recycled shounen platitude feels disgusting on the way out of her mouth but it's as true as anything else she's saying. "It's not magnanimity, just a way of showing that loyalty repaid in kind."

"Well thanks." With that said, he scuttles away, leaving Nozomi alone in front of Moko's room. For a moment she hesitates, and then she enters and stares.

Moko is—

The last time that Nozomi saw Moko, she had flashed a peace sign and one of her signature cheery grins as she handed herself over to the enemy to save them. She had burned like the sun, brilliant and vibrant.

Now she's a mess of shadows and goop in the shape of Moko, glowing red eyes closed as glowing skeletal teeth open and close with each wheezing breath. More like herself than a lot of Aotsuki's cognitive distortions of people, but still violently unsettling.

(Worse still is the lack of smell.)

But she will take what she can get because Moko is alive. Moko is alive. Moko is alive.

Nozomi presses a hand against her forehead, feeling only the cold give of the slime and ooze that makes up her distorted form. It feels...fine. Normal enough. She sighs and sits down in the chair in Moko's room, slumping down.

"What am I doing?"

"What are you doing?"

Nozomi shrieks and shoots up from the chair, looking for whoever had just spoken to her. She's still unused to how everyone sounds so trying to parse who it is without visuals is...daunting but—

"Aotsuki!" She knows the sound of her own choking voice by now.

"Nozomi," he returns, looking down at the sleeping Moko. "What are you doing?"

"What?"

"That is: what is Aotsuki doing?" He emphasizes his own name, careful to say it like she would, the implication not lost on her. There is a non-zero chance that Moko is awake or capable of hearing them at this time. They can't talk openly around her, just in case.

"Watching over Moko." She answers honestly. "Why?"

"Why are you doing this? She seems to be doing just fine." That's true but—

"I'm...worried. I don't want her to be alone again in case—" She can't say the truth: that she feels responsible for Moko having been taken in the first place. That she feels as though she should be the one in this position. That she feels guilty.

"So you're going to put her under twenty-four-hour surveillance? Like she's some kind of patient in the ICU?" Derision hides beneath his pleasant word choice. She pushes down a bristling wave of irritation. "Why you?"

"Well, Nozomi," she emphasizes her own name with as much facetious cheer as she can muster, "I would suggest that perhaps, if you're such good friends with Moko and concerned about her well-being, then maybe you should stand vigil. She seemed to be important to you and your friends, was she not?"

The sour way his face twists makes her feel...better. In an awful way.

She can't find it in herself to care. Moko is - she's safe. She's safe. She's safe.

"I'll discuss setting up shifts with Kurara, Kyoshika, and Omokage tomorrow." Aotsuki says through his teeth. "Would that make you feel better, Aotsuki?"

"I'm sure it would make you feel better, Nozomi."

"It does, does it?"

With that said, Nozomi stops at the door to Moko's room and turns back to face Aotsuki as he settles down on Moko's chair. "And Nozomi?"

"Hm?"

"We can...postpone that discussion until a later date. After you, Kurara, Kyoshika, and Yugamu have figured out the schedule for watching over Moko. Is that alright with you?" It's not really a question and both of them know it.

"Of course. That works for me!" He lies.

"Then goodnight, Nozomi. Goodnight Moko."

(In the bed, Moko shifts slightly and smacks her lips, humming in her exhausted sleep. Her voice, low and murmuring, sounds just like Nozomi remembers.)

(She isn't sure how that makes her feel.)

(She just closes the door behind her and goes to bed, her heart lighter than it's been in some time—hemoanima notwithstanding.)

—

"Aotsuki!" Nozomi flinches as Maruko sidles up to her and waves a webbed hand, grinning wide as a burst of fetid air spews from his toothless maw like a burst of exhaust. "You have a minute?"

"Hm?" She needs a moment to acclimate before she tries speaking.

"Look, hear me out—" Never a good thing to hear Maruko say; for all she doesn't know him too well, she does know that he has a broken brain-to-mouth filter in a similar vein to Kurara and, unlike Kurara, isn't her friend and isn't above being a horrid creep to women. "—but do you think I have a chance?"

After having several of his teeth apparently knocked out of his head—not that Nozomi can tell on account of Aotsuki's perception—during the defensive battle a couple days ago? "With?"

"Kawana, dude!" His bulging eyes squint, receding into his body like a frog, too-wide mouth stretching even wider as a waterfall of ooze and rancid slobber cascades to the floor and puddles beneath his feet. "You think I have a chance with her?"

Nozomi does her best to squash her immediate disgust and irritation and paint a pleasant, Aotsuki-like beatific smile on her face. Whether or not she succeeds remains to be seen but Maruko doesn't say anything so she must have managed to keep her true expression far away from him. "You like Tsubasa?" He nods, a wet, rubbery motion that makes him look like a bobblehead. "What about her?"

Violent crimson and poisonous purple paints his skin as he leers, a low choking noise joining the cacophony of his voice as blood dribbles out of the corners of his eyes and his nostrils. "I mean, look at her!" Nozomi doesn't deign that with a reaction. "She's stacked, jacked, and cute!"

She's also someone who has a severe anxiety disorder.

Out loud, Nozomi just asks, "But what about her? What non-physical attributes of Tsubasa do you like? Her personality? What are her likes and dislikes? Her hobbies? Do you know her favorite music? What does she like to eat?" Maybe it's because, of the group, Maruko is somehow more palatable than the others to be around by nature of his particular appearance, but she can hardly stop herself from actually speaking up and actually demanding an answer from him.

He hadn't been expecting that, apparently, and flinches back with bright yellow confusion. A worried noise escapes his bulbous throat as he widens his eyes in something close to confusion or being startled."What's gotten into you?"

"All I am saying," she extricates herself from the layer of mucus he excretes from his skin, "is that you would have a better 'chance' with her if you knew more about her and perhaps even cared about her as a person."

"Killjoy." Maruko clicks his tongue and sulks, walking in lockstep with her as they both head downstairs. "Can't ask a bro for girl advice."

"I gave you advice," Nozomi counters, emboldened by the disgust surging through her system. "Whether you choose to heed it or not is entirely up to you."

He just whines and plods off in the opposite direction as Nozomi heads to the Library. Good. She isn't sure how much more of his presence she can tolerate before getting sick again.

She scrapes her hand against her side, scooping fistfuls of mucus and ooze from her shoulder where Maruko had touched her, and throws it to the ground with a flick of her wrist. Even with Aotsuki's gloves on, she can feel the tackiness of the slime selfishly grabbing and clinging to her fingers. She's going to have to wash her hands before she handles any books or she might have a fit.

No wonder Aotsuki was so reclusive. Barely a handful of days into dealing with his problems and she's moments from shutting herself in his room and never leaving except to aid in defensive battles. But today she has plans so she can't sit back and do nothing.

She wants to do some research on the human condition and perhaps even Aotsuki's cognitive disorder while she still has the time. Maybe she can help him in ways she, herself, can't be helped. All-in-all, it's a way to distract herself from the ever-present worry about Moko and how, days later, she hasn't woken up.

How she can't be there for her because Aotsuki wouldn't be there for her because Aotsuki doesn't know Moko like Nozomi does.

It's a frustrating mess all around. She hates it.

The Library is as quiet as it always is, the sound of the air filtration system whirling away as Nozomi peruses the digital database for any information on neurology, agnosia, or anima. A few titles stand out and she marks their approximate locations on a slip of paper before browsing the shelves. Rigid spines part beneath inquisitive and probing fingers as she scans each shelf, looking for her prizes. The scent of paper and ink might be overpowered by the lingering remnants of Amemiya and Omokage and whichever other people might make use of the Library, but she can close her eyes and imagine that that's all she can smell. She can use force of will to drown out the unpleasant stench of her teammates with the memory of books, even as she hides away from said teammates.

In the end she only manages to find one title on the human brain and the way senses are mapped to the nervous system. It's a dense medical text but nothing she hasn't read before.

(Curling in an armchair, Nozomi reads word after word after word, sounding out difficult terms and setting down the thick paper to scan for it in a dictionary. She doesn't understand—not yet—but she wants to. It's her one link, the tether that binds her to her mother. If she can have a discussion about her mother's work without stumbling then maybe...maybe she'll be proud of her. Maybe she'll even stay for dinner this time.)

"Aotsuki?" Her concentration is broken by someone calling out to her. She glances over the top of the book, through the lenses of Aotsuki's glasses, to see who it is—even if she can already tell by the hissing overtones.

Sumino peers at her, bright eyes burning from within the looming shadow of his body. Heat blasts off him in furnace waves. He tilts his head, the sound of crackling logs snapping embers in a pit sharp in the quiet of the Library. She has to assume he is frowning—or something of the like, judging by the angle of his indistinct shoulders and the way his eyes pinch and warp in the endless darkness of his face—in confusion or concern. She simply offers him a wan smile in greeting as she puts a bookmark in the text for later. "Takumi. How can I help you?"

The eyes widen and then narrow, darting to the side in something that could be embarrassment or shame. "What makes you think I need something?" His voice hisses and crackles, steam screaming like a dying person.

"Mostly that you bothered me while I was reading." It's a long shot but—

A blast of heat strikes her in the face and Sumino waves his many hands in surprise. "No! I mean, uh...yes, but..."

Good guess. "It's not a bother." His limbs fold back into the mass of his torso, indistinct and obscured. "So?"

The pause he takes stretches into infinity, feels like a brand against her borrowed skin. She wants to stand up and flee from it all. The smell of burning hair and flesh and ash chokes her lungs but she keeps herself firmly in place. Aotsuki wouldn't run so she can't either.

When he finally speaks up, Sumino sounds almost sullen—or perhaps reticent, as those two sound similar when spoken at a hissing whisper. "Do you...think she hates me?"

"Who?" Even as the words leave her mouth, she knows who he's talking about.

"Kirifuji." Ice lances her heart. She fights to keep her face neutrally pleasant. She probably fails. "I just— she's still avoiding me."

"You did make her uncomfortable, did you not?" Extrapolating what Sumino and Aotsuki had spoken about regarding her and Sumino's initial meeting isn't difficult. Aotsuki, it seems, is Sumino's nearest and dearest friend and confidant. Of course he would tell him about her. "Have you not apologized for that?" Not like she would have accepted it. She had, for better or worse, been trying very hard to avoid being in a room alone with Sumino.

Now she has no choice.

Sumino whines, his long torso lolling to the side as he closes his eyes in what must be pain. "I was trying to but she keeps avoiding me and I don't want to make it worse by pressing the issue. It's not like I'm being pushy, am I? Is that the problem? Should I back off?"

The problem isn't that he's being pushy; he isn't. The problem is that she is unwilling to budge. She is the issue.

Also, currently 'Kirifuji' is Aotsuki but that is neither here nor there. That's a problem for her and Aotsuki, not for their de-facto team leader.

"If she is unwilling to meet with you then perhaps pulling back is the right answer." Lies spill from her borrowed lips as easily as anything else.

Sumino's outline melts slightly and half a dozen eyes open all across his mass. They squint in some kind of mix of panic and frustration, crescent shapes like frowning mouths. "But—"

"She is only going to pull away harder if you push." Get the hint. "The more you try and force things, the worse they will get."

A pause; it lasts too long and not long enough. Then Sumino speaks up, whispering burning voice quivering with some kind of choked feeling. "Do you really think that your alternate universe theory is wrong?" What?

"What?" She doesn't mean to say that aloud but—

"I know she's not Karua—I know that but—" He trails off, eyes closing en-masse, and wobbles indistinctly, shadowy hands fretfully gripping at each other, wringing and twisting with emotions she can't even begin to comprehend. "But she's so similar, at least in how she looks. Her attitude is different, as is her everything else, and letting go is so hard but—"

Nozomi's mind makes several connections in very quick succession. The name Sumino called her when he first saw her—Karua, a name he said like a prayer, clutching at her like she was his lifeline—belongs to someone she resembles so closely that he mistook her for her; he continues to have this issue even now. This Karua is someone that is so intrinsic to who Sumino is that, even though he is trying his best, he still cannot separate her from Nozomi as a person. It is so bad that, in an attempt to perhaps help his friend—a designation that Nozomi is bringing into question now that she is experiencing the world through Eito's senses—Eito suggested that perhaps Nozomi is some kind of alternate universe version of this Karua. Eventually he rescinded this theory but Sumino is still considering it.

She feels—

"If you engage with Nozomi like she is Karua, then you are only going to alienate her further." She's talking through molasses. Her mouth is full of cotton. Her ears are full of water. She hates this so much. "Discarding the notion the two are related is the only way to allow your mind to form a connection with her as a person instead of her as an extension of Karua. Nozomi is Nozomi. You are just going to hurt her and yourself if you keep at it."

He pauses. Thinks. Opens a dozen eyes. Closes a dozen more. Then his myriad hands haul himself forward, the hulking mass of his strange shapeless body wobbling and warping as he closes the distance between himself and Nozomi.

Nozomi, who refuses to flinch, let alone blink.

"I guess you're right." A beat. The sound of a cracking branch collapsing under the weight of itself, the feeling of ash and sparks against her skin, the rancid smell of burning to nothing choking. "You usually are." He sounds almost petulant.

She only offers him a pale imitation of a smile as she unkindly wishes for him to just leave her alone. "Thats nice of you to say, Takumi."

"Well," he groans, stretches to an impossible height, possibly popping his back, "I have to go see if I can figure out how to get Ima to relax."

Huh... "Kako asking for some leeway?"

"She wants to fight," he admits in confidence, "but Ima won't let her and if I can convince him to ease the fuck up, maybe we can have more hands on deck for defensive battles."

"That...would be useful." Strategically. Logically: Kako and Ima are literally children, comparatively, and their age relative to everyone else makes her almost blindingly angry to think about them fighting in earnest. A conundrum she doesn't want to touch.

(She offers herself, a lamb willingly going without need for coercion, on the altar of science. Her mother needs her. This will make her happy. She just has to take the injections, the pills, the tests, the anemia, the nausea, the pain, the aching, the dizziness, the distortion, the isolation, the anxiety with a smile and no complaints.)

(She can't complain. She has to be good.)

(Her mother leaves anyway.)

"It would." He sighs through his teeth—or so she assumes, judging by the awful shrieking-whistling sound of green wood in fire—and his eyes close until he's nothing more than an outline of a person in the darkness. "I just...if she didn't want to I wouldn't—"

"You agree with Ima?"

"Oh, hell no!" He almost sounds...offended. "I think Ima is being an extremely overprotective and obsessive little shit, but—"

"But—?"

"...they're so small..." Hm.

Nozomi wonders, in that moment, if maybe she misjudged him. Or, perhaps, she underestimated his ability to weigh costs. If he feels regret and concern about the twins joining combat then—

"If Kako wants to join in combat, I think it's her decision. None of us—Ima included—should be making that choice for her. Even if we disagree with her on principle." She shifts in her seat. "I, personally, believe that neither of them should be on the front line."

Takumi's eyes burn holes in her skin as he flatly watches her sit there. He folds a few dozen arms in something close to contempt. Maybe disappointment? Disapproval? "Aotsuki...Ima stabbed Yakushiji. With lethal intent."

He...had done that, yes. In her defense, she was too overwhelmed by the myriad of monsters crammed into the Cafeteria and too stressed out about Moko's condition to really notice any violence going on, but also Maruko started shrieking like some kind of deflating balloon and she had to excuse herself immediately due to the sudden stench making her actually physically ill. She had heard later—mainly from Amemiya, who had been not-so-subtly discussing it with Omokage in grisly detail—that Yakushiji was doing well, albeit that he was choosing to tough out the wound and heal naturally instead of letting the Revive-o-Matic do the work.

Not too dissimilar from Maruko and his missing teeth, now that she thinks about it.

"That doesn't change my opinion on the matter," she admits, "because whether or not Ima did injure Takemaru, they are younger than everyone else. They shouldn't have to fight." We shouldn't have to fight.

"We shouldn't have to fight," Sumino counters.

She grimaces. "True, but here we are."

"I just...with Shizuhara and Sirei both gone I've kinda been put in a position of..." Power? Control? Authority? Leadership? There are a dozen words for what Sumino's job is among the Last Defense Academy's teenaged meat shields but none of them are wholly true. Even Sumino seems to fail at finding the right word, just giving up and shrugging with his many shoulders. "...so I have to make decisions that nobody likes because we have to survive, right?"

They have to survive. They have to survive. They have to survive.

He's not wrong is the problem.

Nozomi hums in mild agreement. "Maybe the issue is that we don't have much of a choice."

"Rock and a hard place." Sumino's bitter laughter is like a flint striking steel, whispery and echoing, distant.

She wants him to leave her alone. She already has something weighing on her mind. She has plans for the day. She needs to go.

She doesn't want to get up so she just smiles pleasantly up at Sumino and prays he picks up on her displeasure.

"Well," again, the snapping noise of him popping his back, and a soft groan, "Wish me luck."

"Good luck." The words taste like acid coming up.

Takumi leaves like a specter, silent and leaving smoky residue and soot all over the floor. Nozomi just sits there for a moment, trying to pull herself together.

Karua. Karua Karua Karua Karua.

She hates Karua.

(She doesn't even know Karua. That's unkind of her.)

(She doesn't care about being unkind right now. Karua—whoever she is—has done nothing but made her life miserable and difficult.)

—

It's not a coincidence that Nozomi snags Aotsuki by the elbow for their talk at about the same time she knows Sumino is busy running errands for Ima. In fact, it's a completely calculated decision on her part. Sumino is, by and large, the one person she knows will actually seek either of them out without fail. If he is otherwise occupied, then he can't bother them and upset what will likely be a very intense discussion between the two of them regarding combat etiquette and roles on the battlefield.

His wanton violence using her body, disregarding supporting their comrades, isn't something that she wants to see become some kind of habit.

(The way her face had twisted into something resembling a grin, a manic bloodlust that had made her seem like a monster. The way Aotsuki had reveled in the genuinely disgusting act of gibbing and misting every Invader that came within her range, sharply boosting himself so as to further that violence and release of pent-up anger and anxiety. Yes, she understood the need for relief, but that had been—)

(She was jealous. Her own nausea held her back, Aotsuki's scythe and the monsters on all sides a chain and shackle binding her to the ground, limiting her abilities. She, too, wanted to paint herself in blood and let off steam but she couldn't. She was incapable of moving, of fighting any harder than weak struggles against her imminent death. But she—)

"I thought we were going to talk during lunch?" Aotsuki bats his eyelashes at her, innocent and doe-eyed. In response, Nozomi just grits her teeth and shakes her head, hiding her emotions behind as much placidity as she can manage.

"I figure this isn't something you want to discuss where other people can hear," she offers him, "so you will have to forgive me for moving around the timetable."

"Okay." It sounds like a dismissal. It probably is. "Where should we have this discussion then?"

"How about the woods? The ones within the Wall of Fire, on the campus grounds?"

"The two of us alone?" The implication isn't lost on her.

She smiles again, tilts her head ever-so-slightly, mimicking an expression she's seen Aotsuki make before. It's a kind smile, a mask, an expression she's realizing is likely more placation than placidity. "Do you have another suggestion?" He doesn't. It seems as though he simply wants to be contrarian. That's a facet of Aotsuki that she never would have guessed he had to him. "Then shall we?"

"Lead the way." The words sound forced. Nozomi chooses to not acknowledge that.

They walk in silence all the way to the woods. Nozomi does her best to not look at Atosuki - at her sluggish body slithering along the ground, leaving a detritus-riddled trail of blood and viscera in his wake. She does her best to block out the sound of her body's labored wheezing, of the faint stench of iron and fire and gasoline that wafts whenever the wind changes just enough. She keeps her eyes ahead, keeps her mouth pressed in a thin line, and walks.

They arrive at their destination all too soon. Nozomi turns to face Aotsuki, swallowing revulsion with a practiced smile. It feels brittle. It probably looks brittle. She doesn't care when it's just the two of them. The edifice between them is thin, there's no reason to lie to the one person in on the con.

"Aotsuki—"

"Yes Nozomi?" Aotsuki cranes her neck, a cascade of teeth and blood splattering buckshot against her chest with the movement.

"You cannot fight like that again." Uncharitable. Unkind. Violent. Like discharging her gun, like slamming his scythe into an enemy and wrenching, they come unbidden and angry.

Aotsuki gives her dead, fishy eyes that—in a face untouched by his cognitive disorder—likely are endearing and wet and innocent. As it stands, it just makes her stomach roil and rock with irritable nausea. "What do you mean?"

"Your— my job on the battlefield is to support. To heal. To help. You can't throw all that away just to - to feel better about yourself! To let off steam and - and just—"

"Is that what it looked like from the outside?" He cuts her off, cold burbling liquid nitrogen, searing and rotting flesh with its icy touch. "To you?" He cranes his neck, lolls and flops, boneless and torn open and weak. The derision is still visible, comes across like a neon sign and yet—

"Of course it did!" While nobody else might have seen what she saw, it was assigned clear as day. "You looked possessed!"

"Aren't we?"

They are, in a way, but—

"We can't let them realize that! Even if it is true—" in a sense, "they cannot realize that we are not ourselves! You said it yourself!"

"I did," Aotsuki acknowledges with a gentle—horrible—nod of his head, "and I believe that my conduct on the battlefield is well within acceptable behavior parameters. Nobody but you or I would notice."

"You can't possibly know that—"

"But I do." He cuts her off, impact, metal on metal on glass on flesh. She startles, flinches, and he moves forward like a speeding vehicle. "And it worked."

"Don't do it again."

He stares at her. Blankly.

"Don't. This isn't a request or - or a favor or anything. This is a demand. A...stipulation." Her head sings with the tinny tone of panic and horror. "If I can't ask for help, if I can't let Omokage take a look at us, then you have to play your part when defensive battles happen. You—"

"Then you have to do the same." Like his scythe, Aotsuki tears through her thoughts and halts her advance. "You can't cower. You can't falter. You have to press forward, rip at the enemy, not once flinch at the blood and violence. If you're going to deny me my relief, then I will vicariously live through your bloodshed."

A layer of the veil between them parts and, for a moment, Nozomi sees a side of Aotsuki she has never seen before. She sees a mirror, a warped anger she recognizes the same way she knows the sound of her own stuttering, hampered heartbeat. She feels seen.

It clings to her like the ooze her broken body secretes.

She silently nods. Concedes. It's a small pittance to maintain the ruse he demanded they uphold.

(She doesn't think about how it feels like losing a battle. She doesn't think about how it feels like making a deal with a devil. She doesn't think about how it feels like being strapped down, wired up, and injected. 'Just once,' her mother had said. 'One injection, one doctor's visit, one transfusion, one test...')

(Her mother lied.)

(Maybe Aotsuki is lying too. Only time would tell.)

"Will you be able to stomach it?" Her voice sounds sharp paired with his words, like an ampoule slug impacting flesh, bruising in starburst patterns against her skin. "Being so close to the violence."

Her teeth ache with a desire to gnash and pull and rip and tear and consume. Violence lights her burning blood on fire. She places a hand on her chest and feels the way Aotsuki's heart races with desire.

The way her body had frozen up in the middle of the fight, unable to step past the back line with Maruko. The way he danced around her as she tried—and failed—to become a crimson-soaked butterfly of death in the midst of a defensive battle she could have done in her sleep, had she been in her body with her weapon and her place in the pecking order. The way she watched her body shoot forward, painting himself in the gibbets of his enemies, a secretive smile only seen by her stretching the gaping wound that is his mouth into a howl of malefic ecstasy. Cackling like a witch. Raining the front in viscera.

She had been jealous, yes, but she had also been afraid.

The shaking in her hands could have been either. Who can say.

"Of course," she lies.

"Then that's that." Aotsuki smiles, a glimmering bloody mess of glass and pain. His eyes squint into lilac crescents, glinting with the same unidentifiable haze of emotions she's come to recognize as a mask far more unreadable than one would ever need normally.

Ah, but they're not normal. Therein lies the problem.

"One other thing: Sumino came to talk to me—to you—about something you had discussed before...all this." She takes a deep, full breath through her teeth, then exhales. "I want to know what that was about."

"Sumino considers me his best friend," Aotsuki airily dismisses with a floppy wave of a hand. "He talks to me about a lot of things. You need to be specific."

"About Karua," the name tastes like ash on her tongue. She wants to spit it out like something offensive but she can't. Not even in front of Aotsuki. "About alternate universes."

"Ah." The sound of her punctured lungs deflating with a soft pop. "That."

"Yes," she retorts. "That."

He doesn't elaborate.

She isn't sure why she expects him to without her pressing first. He's markedly more stubborn and petty than one would assume on first blush.

"Care to elaborate on what he meant, in case he brings it up again?" It's almost like trying to talk to a genie with Aotsuki. She has to be so specific, so particular, or he won't answer her in any meaningful way. Every conversation is a chess match and she's always on her back foot.

"That..." Aotsuki trails off, fake-thinking as he hums, many-jointed fingers pressing against his lips. "You resemble his childhood friend. To a terrifying degree."

"I am...aware." She was unaware that Karua was Sumino's childhood friend, but she was aware that he keeps confusing the two of them and she hates it.

"Knowing this and knowing that he considers me one of his dearest and closest friends, Takumi asked me for advice and I suggested—partially in jest and partially so that he would back off a little, because it looked like his attention was making you incredibly uncomfortable—that perhaps there was alternate dimensions at play." Nozomi stares at him blankly, trying her best to convince him of how inane and stupid his 'suggestion in jest' really sounds. He just continues on, sighing wistfully, ignoring her blatant displeasure. "And when that didn't seem to do much for his...attachment issues, I rescinded my theory. Nozomi is Nozomi and Karua is Karua. Takumi just needs to understand that. Why? Did he come asking for clarification on my initial idea?"

"I think..." She doesn't know how generous she wants to be with how she puts this. Does she kindly tell him that he made things worse or— "He hasn't quite figured out how he feels and he came to you for advice again."

"What did you tell him?" He almost sounds pleased, the gurgling of his borrowed voice bubbling and spluttering with an audible amusement.

"That he's only going to alienate 'Nozomi' further if he continues to conflate the two. That he needs to stop trying so hard. That 'she' will come to him on her own terms and at her own time."

"The reeds bow to the wind but the noble oak is felled in its rigidity?" He offers.

"The gentle warmth of the sun does more to remove a coat than the sharp north wind." She counters.

"What a clever response to get him to leave me alone."

"It was to get him to leave me alone," she corrects, "but in this case, one and the same."

"Eventually we will go back to our own bodies." Hopefully, he doesn't say, but she can hear the implications in how he says it. "And when that occurs you just want some space?"

"Wouldn't you?" It's rhetorical. He knows it, she knows it. Neither of them will give an inch.

"Is that all?"

"Yes." Well, actually... "Or, no. One more thing."

"Alright Columbo," by now she's gotten good at understanding how Aotsuki speaks when he's being genuine and when he's being facetious; this is the latter, "what else can I do for you today?"

"What are your relations with the other members of the Special Defense Unit? Just so I know who to talk to and how?"

Something unreadable crosses Aotsuki's borrowed face, her own expression twisting and pinching into something incomprehensible. Then it passes. "Takumi is the only one who goes out of his way to talk to me. I have initiated conversations with Gaku before, to set up the cookout that unfortunately was followed by our food stocks being destroyed but otherwise I tend to only answer if he speaks to me. Takemaru usually only comes to talk if he has a problem with someone else, as he seems to view me as Takumi's second. The twins keep to themselves—though it seems Kako does so more because she's forced to rather than Ima's distrustful isolation. Shouma doesn't usually bother me more than anyone else. Darumi seems to think I'm similar to some characters she likes and asks me to watch horror films a lot, so beware of that. Tsubasa at least only really bothers me if we're in the same room and she wants to pick my brain about something." So he doesn't talk to anyone unless they talk to him, limiting himself to responding to their queries and quandaries and small-talk if need be. Understood. "And yourself?"

"Omokage and I worked together on making my weapon work the way it does. We also developed the potions everyone uses in combat, though I functioned more like a guinea pig than a scientist in that instance." Her answers are a little more complicated than his but she doesn't - she didn't have a cognitive disorder making forming bonds with others difficult. "Kurara and I are...I would consider us best friends so she'll likely seek you out for trivial reasons more than the others. Kyoshika and I are both close to Kurara and we both like to keep fit. She might ask you to swim laps or weight lift or something because she's feeling restless. And you're likely already aware of my relationship with Moko...considering. Aside from them, the people from your campus are...we haven't had much of a chance to...bond."

"That's good!" Is it? "That means that the only concerns are the three from your campus."

"Four," she corrects.

He just smiles silently at her as she parses what all he meant by how he said things.

"...and really only Sumino for you." Because nobody really knows Aotsuki enough to notice any discrepancies. "I see."

"Do you happen to have the recipes for your weapon that you and Yugamu put together written down somewhere so I can study them?"

The question feels like something just left of what they were talking about but it manages to startle Nozomi out of her funk, if only for that moment. "Uh...there should be a notebook on my bookshelf? It's a plain lined one, written in pencil? All of my notes on my weapon, the potions, and the traps I helped Kurara with should be in there somewhere."

"Then that will be my homework during my shift watching Moko." Every word sounds as sincere as a car salesman's pitch. "Yours should be figuring out how to properly use my weapon."

"Of course." Because combat could happen at any time.

At least a VR battle will be without any of the stakes or the real people. Just simulations of them.

She can get better accustomed to them when they aren't really there.

Without another word, Aotsuki drags himself away and leaves her in the clearing with just her thoughts spinning around in her head over and over and over again.

She's wearing a hole in her head but something about how Aotsuki had described his relationships with the others stuck out to her. How every one of them was...transactional. Give and take. Distanced. Even the one he has with Sumino.

But he almost sounded—

—

Nozomi's vision goes dark as she is forcibly ejected from the VR program, the HUD flashing a bright crimson warning to accompany the blaring alarms indicating a defensive battle sending spiking panic through her body. It's all psychosomatic, all just remnants of her mind panicking with none of the physical feeling, but that doesn't stop her heartrate from spiking even in Aotsuki's body.

It's an inconvenient alarm at that. Back-to-back battles aren't uncommon but they're always unwelcome and maybe it's the fact that Aotsuki doesn't have as emotionless a face as Nozomi does but she certainly has to fight to keep her irritation from showing as she slides into the War Room. Then she has to fight the way that Aotsuki's agnosia warps her comrades into unrecognizable messes of vile sensations to appear normal.

Or...normal for Aotsuki.

"Can they pick a better time to attack us?" Maruko croaks miserably, flat face an ashen olive color with puce flickering on the edges. "I was just about to go the fuck to bed."

"Why don't you just ask them?" Kurara snaps, splattering Maruko with chunks of rotting and maggot-infested tomato. "Dear Invaders, can you pretty please only assault us at about midday? I need my beauty sleep or I look like and act like a repulsive toad. Sincerely, Maruko the Fucking Moron."

"Hey!"

Before Maruko and Kurara could get into it, Yakushiji physically interposed himself between them, his broad shoulders and multiple arms flared wide despite the fact that he should be resting, considering he had been stabbed recently. "C'mon now, this is no time to be fightin' each other."

"But—"

"Everyone's fuckin' tired," he continues, his swampy breath filling Nozomi's lungs with condensation that tastes of exhaust and alcohol, "and bitin' each other's head's off ain't gonna' fix shit. Just take your rage out on the Invaders, yeah?"

"Well said," Omokage purrs. "I, for once, can't wait to get my claws in those pretty little things." He flexes his fingers, the needle-like points of his awful inhuman claws glistening with some kind of toxic excretion. Nozomi does her best to not look too long at any of her friends because—

(A rotting greenish tomato supported on the neck of a ball-jointed doll staggering hither and thither to, herky-jerky movement unsettling even as the wailing 'face' of the thing emoted and babbled in a voice that carried the buzzing of flies with it. A looming, centipede-like being with one piercing eye and mandibles and pedipalps that somehow perfectly capture the expression he must be making, whose myriad of writhing limbs end in spindly hands with venom dripping from the claw-tipped fingers. The shape of a person made of a thousand and one gleaming blades, a bleeding, beating heart in the chest of it, like a bird trapped in a cage, her words like metal on metal, like metal on a chalkboard.)

—because she loves them and she doesn't want to not be around them but—

"Where the hell is Sumino anyway?" Kurara turns her ire outward, Maruko and Yakushiji free of her frustrations.

"Probably trying to play peace-keeper between the twins," Amemiya offers. Her layered voice echoes eerily as she cackles, "Not that it's working, of course, but he's too earnest to drop it. Like a dumb dog."

"Woof woof," Takumi's ashen voice causes everyone to jump. "And, for your information, I was trying to figure out how to help the twins, but I'm not stupid, Amemiya."

It's hard to tell with how fractured her everything is, but she seems as though she might actually feel some modicum of shame being called out like that.

Either way, Sumino walks through the crowd and looks at the monitoring system. "What's the problem? Do we have a Commander this time?"

"Probably," Kawana says around a mouthful of vomit and asphalt and tar. "It's really hard to tell through the...whatever that smoke stuff is."

"Mist," Nozomi finds herself offering, unbidden. When everyone turns to look at her—Aotsuki included, his raised eyebrow an indictment of her out of character behavior—she continues her explanation. "Like clouds but close to the ground. Just condensation. Nothing to be worried about, though it will limit visibility."

"Then let's work around that. Move out!" At Sumino's command, everyone transforms.

(Nozomi finds relief in the cocoon, the silence brought on by blood and isolation a brief comfort before she's thrown back into a room full of monsters that used to be people. She almost misses it when it's over.)

They split in two squads; Nozomi herself is on the foremost front with Sumino, Ginzaki, Amemiya, and Omokage while Aotsuki is on the right-hand front with Kurara, Kyoshika, Kawana, Maruko, and Yakushiji. The thick mist makes it easier to avoid seeing her comrades' horrific forms at the cost of making it nigh on impossible to see anything at all unless it's inches in front of them.

Whatever Commander is leading this attack force has a plan and it's a tactically sound, if not cowardly one. Judging by the way Sumino is shifting next to her, he likely is thinking something similar.

"Don't get overwhelmed!" He commands. "Find the source of the mist and take it out. There's no way this is natural!"

"Easy for you to say," Maruko snipes across the comms. "I can't see jack or shit through this mess. I'm not a close-quarters fighter either, so it's really fucking me up."

"Then break skulls until something works!" Yakushiji roars.

"Fucking meatheaded idiot..." But Kurara's irritated grumble is cut off by Kyoshika laughing and agreeing with him.

Amemiya, thankfully, seems to understand the situation they're in because she throws a knife with a lazy flick of one of her wrists and listens as it impacts something decidedly not made of flesh. "They're on the back line! Cowards!"

"Focus that then!" And they're off.

Aotsuki had demanded, in exchange for him taking a more passive and support role to maintain their ruse, that she be more proactive. So, having put in the time and effort, she does so, slamming the snathe of his weapon into the ground and feeding it hemoanima. Spires of bloody mud shoot out in an X shape, impacting the same inorganic object with the same sound as when Amemiya had caught it.

The smell of acrid mechanical smoke mixes with the rancid mix of her comrades stenches and the battlefield writ large as Nozomi lifts her weapon up and slams it down again, repeating the act.

She probably should be more careful with when and how she's spilling Aotsuki's blood but he demanded she be less cautious and the Revive-o-Matic works for him so consequences be damned.

(And maybe she's feeling a little self-destructive and frustrated with how things have been with Moko. Maybe she just wants to take her frustrations out on the enemy. Maybe she's just a bad person. It hardly matters in the moment.)

One of the machines that's creating the mist explodes in a sharp flash of fire and combustion and metal, splattering the Invaders and people in front of it in the cooked flesh of the pilot. Amemiya's cheers are cut short when one of the Lesser Invaders takes advantage of her distraction to attack.

On the other front, Yakushiji, Kurara, Aotsuki, and Gaku shriek in pain. Sumino turns to see what the problem is and is torn into by a Greater Invader while his attention is elsewhere.

Another Greater Invader strikes Nozomi and bruises a rib. She coughs on impact and turns to defend herself but the mist is too thick.

"ETA on those mist things being taken out?" Aotsuki calls out over the comms.

"One down," Nozomi answers, "but I don't have visual on the other. It's too thick and I can't see who's in front of me to try and push."

"No luck!" Amemiya answers. "Even my superb vision is pulling jack in this mess. Also I think this little thing might've hobbled me so ol' Darumi might have to make some dirty fireworks soon."

"My pathetic eyes are incapable of seeing past my own short, stubby nose. Sorry!" Ginzaki's apology sounds like he's seconds from crying. "I can't even be a proper meat shield because none of the Invaders can even see us!"

"Well some invisible bastard cut the fuck out of us on this side!" Yakushiji's voice sounds pained and, judging by the way Maruko is whimpering, it's likely that everyone who had been struck by that attack weren't doing well. "No clue when that'll happen again."

"Hurry the fuck up or we're going down!" Kurara orders. To anyone else, she would sound angry but Nozomi can pick up on the panic.

Then two new voices call out over the comms.

"Leave this to us."

A bright burst of bloody red light streaks across the battlefield from behind Nozomi, back closer to the shield generator. It blows a hole in the second mist generator and the machine spins in a circle as its remaining engine tries to overcompensate, throwing the occupant against the burning hole punctured in the side and killing it before the entire machine explodes and the mist clears from the field.

Nozomi turns to see Kako kneeling there, a large, grotesque rifle pressed against her shoulder, its angelic wings acting as a sight for her. A spiderweb of cracks spiral out from where the butt of the weapon kicked against her shoulder, shattering the porcelain and revealing the sodden hair and flesh contained within her angelic and doll-like shell.

Unbeknownst to all of them, a singular Greater Invader had broken through and flanked Kako, claws raising up as it prepared to gut their savior. Before it can so much as move, a red and black blur shoots across the quad and tears it in half, tossing the upper half of it to the side while the lower half spews blood and other multicolored fluids across Kako's hair. Ima settles behind her, a pair of black bony wings with blood feathers spread as he hovers above the ground with something akin to pride on his painted face.

"Guys!" Sumino's breathless voice carries with it a heavy sense of relief.

"Sorry it took us so long," Kako offers. "I've never transformed before." Nozomi can sympathize. The first time is always the hardest, the fear stilling your hand and causing tremors to race through your limbs. "But we're here now! Leave any of the mist machines to me!"

"And I'll watch my dear sister's back so you lot can focus on killing the Commander!" Ima adds.

"And where the hell did you come from?" For the first time since he was stabbed, Yakushiji sounds furious at Ima. It's a good thing that he's on the other front, considering how hairtrigger his temper is—even if Ima is a child and he seems to have a code of honor regarding not hitting women and children.

"Didn't we just say?" Ima's tinny reply carries his usual disinterested bite, razor blades packed into a fist, pushed against skin but never dragged down. "Clean out your ears Mister Yakushiji!"

"Stop fucking bickering and get to fighting!" Kurara snaps across the comms. Nozomi can hear the sound of her quickly assembling a turret and walls. "Your front has small fries so let us focus up or someone here's gonna bleed out."

"It's already too late for me...," Maruko groans. "Fucking shit. Can't believe the bitch took a potshot at me in the fucking mist. Goddammit..." How bad were Maruko's wounds? He could heal himself by stealing blood from enemies and yet—

Is Aotsuki not doing her - his job again?!

She doesn't have time to think about that, the Invaders aren't waiting on them to get their shit together before regrouping and attacking again. While the other front has to contend with the Commander, they have wave after wave of Invaders and, unlike the other side, they don't have Kurara to help shore up defenses.

Ginzaki, thankfully, does just fine.

As he leaps into the center of the quad and shouts out a taunting cry, the Invaders within range turn their attention to him and swarm. His mech withdraws its limbs and activates the defensive protocols, each blow glancing off his hard shell and reflecting the damage back at his attackers.

"Maruko, if you're gonna explode, do it sooner rather than later! Nozomi can't be in your pocket just because you're a fucking coward!" Kurara shrieks over the sound of her turret.

Omokage takes advantage of their frenzy to work his dangerous magic, whipping his disjointed limbs out of their sockets to strike at swaths of Invaders with extra fervor. His weapon comes back painted in Invader gore and he gently takes a taste, giggling drunkenly as he does so.

"Fear not, Gaku-dono! I shall protect you from any who would mean you harm!" Kyoshika's bright proclamation is cut off by the sound of what has to be the Commander slicing into them again, a pained whimper escaping her mouth.

To her side, Amemiya staggers slightly a bit and then draws a deep breath, "Time for Darumi to shine!" Her shriek of delight is immediately followed by her drawing her blade across her throat and an explosion of blood and knives raining down on most of the enemies surrounding Ginzaki. Her limp body collapses to the ground and is scooped up by the drones to deliver her to the Revive-o-Matic, leaving behind a crimson-soaked field and one less combatant.

"Incoming!" Aotsuki calls. From where they're standing, Nozomi can see the green cloud of her panacea gently dissolving as the wind blows. "Healing inbound." The sound of him firing her gun, the specific sound of an ampoule shot leaving the barrel. At least he's holding up his end of the bargain.

Sumino lunges, his sword piercing one of the shield Greater Invaders through the eye, removing the blade and flicking fluids off of it as he pivots to slash in a wide strike to prevent any of the Lesser Invaders from advancing.

"Look my way you goat fucker!" Yakushiji roars and slams his bat against his bike, the noise echoing even on the other front. It must work because the next noise that comes from his comms is him tearing away on his bike, the engine screaming.

Nozomi presses forward, scythe cutting through Invader after Invader, losing herself in the almost heartbeat rhythm of combat. As she spins and whirls, her body remembering how to use the weapon more than her mind does, she hears the humming buzz of Ginzaki's laser and kicks back in time to watch it mist a large line of Invaders. The machine itself sparks and whines, joints locking from the energy expenditure.

"Maruko!" Kawana shrieks in horror. From Maruko's comms comes a horrible meaty sound and shrieking. Kawana's comms are forcibly muted but not before the sound of her heaving starts.

From the rear, Kako fires off intermittent shot after intermittent shot, the pauses between her attacks indicative of some kind of kickback doing damage to her delicate form. Still, the burning bright lasers she shoots into Greater Invaders tears chunks out of them and makes them easy prey for the frontline fighters.

"Maruko, now is not the time to be a fuckin' bitch about this!" Yakushiji commands. "You're doin' worse not dyin'! Fuckin' let the Revive-o-Matic do its damn job!"

Ima dances across the battlefield on wings of blood and burnt bone, the wind he generates shoving and rearranging enemies into favorable positions for his sister or any other combatant to slaughter. His cruel, amused laughter contrasts against how delicate he looks—even as one of the ranged Greater Invaders clips him and the shadows contained within the pretty surface of his doll body peek out and grasp for the thing that did this to him.

"Fuh-fine!" Maruko's voice sounds wet and choked, like there's blood in places blood should not be. He takes a soggy breath and screams with something that sounds—to Nozomi—like violent rage. From everyone on that side's comms, the sound of a hail of bullets and blood echoes, layered over and over again from whatever angle they're catching the suicide attack from. "Bastards..." A drone flies out of the school to scoop up Maruko's corpse but it hardly matters because the Invaders stop fighting and begin to look lost, their weird expressionless faces somehow conveying confusion and concern.

"Commander's down!" Kurara barks out. "Clean up the mess while we make sure it can't do shit!"

"Roger!" Sumino nods, then turns to face everyone on his front. Without another word, they all throw themselves into combat with abandon, ready for this late-night mess to be over.

The fight is finished within seconds, Amemiya jogging back out just in time to see the last Invader fall to Kako's gun. "Awww. Darn. I missed all the fun, didn't I?"

"I don't think exploding yourself counts as 'missing' anything," Maruko whines as he plods out after her. "Shit fucking hurts."

"You have your teeth back!"

He squelches down at her observation, a flush of brown and green curling across his sticky skin. "Yeah, well, shit still fucking hurt. That Commander was mean."

"Speaking of—" Sumino straightens up and strides over to where Kurara and Yakushiji have the de-transformed Commander pinned and penned in a series of electrified walls. "What do we do with you?"

"Let me have her!" Maruko's croaking voice reaches a tree frog pitch, whining and piteous in equal measures. Nozomi holds her breath as the wafting scent of body odor and swamp bursts in her nose. "I got the worst of it!"

"Yeah, well, we had to cover your ass while you limped around trying to undo what boo-boos you had gotten," Kurara snaps back. A chunk of rotting tomato spews from her mouth and impacts the fence, frying and smelling somehow worse than ever before. "If you hadn't been such a little pussy—"

"We all know that Maruko-senpai's cowardice cost your side some time and pain, but if it soothes his bruised ego—" Ima cuts in.

"I don't wanna hear shit from you right now." Yakushiji, rightfully, didn't let him speak more than that. Fire flickers in his nostrils and he huffs with barely contained anger as he looms over the Commander, back to Ima and Kako both.

Ima backs down without so much as a word, a shadowy tendril pulling a loose chunk of his face back in place.

Aotsuki chimes in, looking down his nose at the Commander. "I think whoever gets the killing blow is up to Sumino, don't you?"

"Huh?" Kurara's ire wanes. "Why him?"

"We've put him in somewhat of a leadership position so isn't it only fair that we don't rescind leadership when we feel it's convenient?" But Nozomi isn't really paying attention to any of that. Her eyes are on the Commander.

Because the Commander looks like a person.

Granted, she's seen de-transformed Commanders before. The one who had taken Moko looked disturbingly like Kurara once it had been forced out of its more monstrous shape. The one who had attacked them as soon as they had gotten to the main campus had reminded her a bit of Yakushiji with its build and angry, defensive posture. But she hadn't been dealing with Aotsuki's unique problems at the time. She had assumed, like with all of her comrades, that a de-transformed Commander would appear monstrous still. That whatever Commander they fought would be nigh-indistinguishable from their combat form, even when not in it.

She was wrong.

Whatever this Commander had looked like in combat, it currently appears to be a young, frightened woman with a mask made of serpentine bones. It curls in on itself, looking up at its jailors, and its breathing is jagged and panicked.

As the arguing reaches a fever pitch, the Commander speaks out, a loud, unintelligible bark of some kind of language none of them know. Everyone's attention snaps back to it as it stands up, knees wobbling like a baby deer, and holds its hands up in a gesture everyone can recognize as surrender.

"Nuh-uh," Maruko sneers, "We're not falling for that shit again!" Again? Nozomi tries to make eye-contact with Aotsuki but his gaze is fixed firmly on the Commander.

"B-but I think it might actually—" Before Ginzaki can continue his thought, the Commander speaks again, hands reaching up towards its mask. Everyone tenses, reaches for their weapons, but it moves with a slow purpose and unclasps the mask and removes it.

Beneath that mask is a sad, wet-eyed woman with pigments marking her face in some kind of ritualistic way, her long hair cascading over her shoulders. She clutches her mask against her chest and speaks again.

Nozomi can't breathe.

Somewhere, muffled by the tinny sound of her panic, she can hear an argument start up and Kawana turn to the side to vomit from the stress. She can hardly think, though, because if seeing the Commander as a person had been difficult before, it is impossible now.

How can she kill someone, drink them dry and leave them a dessicated husk, if they look like a person to her? Surrounded on all sides by monsters and beasts and horrors, to be presented with a person—something human-like—is less a balm and more a punishment. This is a person, a woman, someone asking for them to spare her—even if they can't understand her words, the tone alone is loud and clear—and all the Commanders are like this?

It was easier when they were faceless monsters. When they were beasts. When they were 'it'.

Now that she can see her, see what they're doing to her, see someone as scared and hurt as they are—

Nozomi manages to steel herself just enough to feign at Aotsuki's usual gesture he makes whenever he wants to hide how badly he's affected by his company. She clutches at her chest and offers Sumino a thin, insincere smile. "Pardon me, but - I'm—"

"Huh?" Sumino turns a set of eyes towards him, the remainder fixed firmly on the Commander. "Oh, uh, yeah. No. Sorry. If you're not feeling well..."

"Thank you." And, coward that she is, she flees.

(The way the Commander looked at them reminded her of the way she had looked at the doctors. Fear, panic, horror, and begging.)

(She can't. Not now. She can always apologize to Aotsuki later.)

(Because she didn't know. None of them did. But if she can look like a person then what does that mean about her mother's experiments - about Nozomi? About cryptoglobin and hemoanima and the Special Defense Unit as a whole? What even is this war? How much of what she's been told can she trust?)

Her hair isn't too dissimilar from his own, both in color and texture. It's more silver than his own ashen brown but it has the same weight and falls relatively straight, which is a relief. Her skin is an unhealthy pale—likely a side-effect of whatever caused her to have less hemoanima than the rest of the humans at either academy—and she's both unhealthily thin and has a fair bit of muscle on her. It's the lack of fat, the hard muscle replacing what should be healthy weight on her bones, and he frowns at how he can feel her lungs hitch and her heart pick up the moment he does any form of strenuous exercise. Even running up two flights of stairs to escape Takumi had winded her, the fluttering feeling finally leaving after several minutes of idle examination and resting.

It's almost paradoxical how she manages to be frail and sturdy in equal measures, her body determined to eat itself alive even as she works double-time to prevent such a fate. What remains is something akin to a statue, a defined being of ephemeral beauty, a bit like a dandelion seconds away from being blown apart in the wind.

When Eito was younger, he found solace and beauty looking at photographs of landscapes ruined by humanity's greed and ignorance. Vistas long lost to global warming and then what he later learned was World Death, preserved in film and print, his only escape from the constant onslaught of monsters on all sides.

Nozomi reminds him of one he saw of an ice-covered mountain peak, backlit by a sunset—or perhaps a sunrise, he can hardly remember after so many years—in cool colors as the sky behind it bled pink to a rich, velvety blue. The grey rock of the mountain looked almost purple in contrast, the snow scattering the sun's beams in bright bursts of blue and pink, soft clouds streaking white and orange across the front. She has the color pallet for sure; all cool tones with hardly an ounce of flush to her ensemble. She even has the stark cheekbones and jawline that makes him think of cliffsides.

She has a mole under her eye.

That final detail pushes him away from the mirror and away to fixing his appearance. While the morning announcements have barely finished playing, he can't chance being marked as 'suspicious' simply because he's incapable of at least looking the part. If he's to play at being Nozomi, he best dress like her.

Thankfully, she seems content with only one outfit in total: some kind of variation on a school uniform. Unthankfully, he's realized that she wears her hair in a braid and he is not exactly practiced in the art.

No better time than the present to learn, even if the thought alone makes his skin crawl.

Peeling Nozomi's sleep clothes off—grateful he remembered to lock her door as a sudden, horrible fear of one of the others walking in on him without warning gripped at his weak heart with vicious claws—he pauses. Not because he is in a female body in the nude—he has no interest in anything a human has going on, let alone a body he is inhabiting—but because something Nozomi said earlier makes a much larger degree of sense than before.

When he had asked her what her body looked like, expecting her to describe some kind of fetal monstrosity with bulging doe-eyes and thin hair, she had instead described some kind of macabre slug of a car wreck victim. And, namely, she had gestured across her chest as she discussed how his organs were spilling out of his open body.

A large scar runs across Nozomi's torso, along the line she had drawn as she described what she had been seeing.

A car wreck, hm? His fingers probe the long-healed wound. A smile plays across his face as he connects dots she likely hadn't intended to reveal. Perhaps that has to do with why her hemoanima is so weak. At least he can assume that her perception of everyone else through his eyes will be as colored by her own memories as his were untainted.

Without a second thought, he pulls on a bra and clean underwear and finishes dressing himself, placing her sleep clothes on her bed for later. Now for his hair.

His own hair has only ever been long enough to braid when he was in the hospital. His mother had liked his hair and, when under the care of the so-called nurses and doctors that had decided his eyes were a 'problem' that needed to be 'fixed', he hadn't been allowed control over anything, let alone his own appearance. The nurses had put their filthy, twisted fingers in his hair and had left their horrid residue behind when they'd finished winding his hair into a sturdy plait so it wouldn't get in the way of his 'activities'. So, while he has some experience with having his hair braided, he doesn't necessarily have experience with braiding hair.

Thankfully, Nozomi's braid usually falls over her shoulder so it doesn't have to really be even. He can work with that, so long as he can stomach looking in a mirror for however long it takes to finish the act.

Combing her hair and putting on her headband gives him some degree of understanding as to how much he actually has to work with. It's less than he thought but more than he's comfortable with but discomfort is nothing new.

He divides the majority of the remainder into three even chunks and begins to twine them together. Over, under, over, under. His fingers work with almost mindless dexterity as he mentally clocks out to avoid thinking about the situation.

Over, under, over, under.

Did Nozomi finally cave and put his glasses on? She had to, considering how poorly she took to her friends' appearances.

Over, under, over, under.

They never managed to discuss how to work each other's weapons before being interrupted. Knowing how dramatic irony works and how often the Invaders like to attack, they may not have enough time to figure out the differences between them before the next defensive battle. In fact, Eito would wager that it's incredibly likely that they may have to deal with a scouting party of some sort within the next few days.

Over, under, over, under.

Watching Nozomi shakily press the point of his Infuser against her chest, eyes wide and panicked, had been a novel experience. Thankfully, she was intelligent enough to grasp what he was saying as he talked her through how it felt to detransform, but it had been a sight to behold to watch her shake like a panicked animal as she froze in the face of death. Her bite had been surprising as well. He didn't expect her to be so...testy. She's always come off as a pushover and yet—

Over, under, over, under.

A knock at the door. Eito's fingers slip and his clumsy, uneven braid begins to unravel. With an irritated sigh, Eito uses a hairband to tie it off and moves to respond to whoever has decided that they want to bother 'Nozomi' so early in the morning. Surely it couldn't be Takumi again?! Not after the way Eito had...left him. He has to have more tact than that.

"One moment!" As before, Eito flattens out his irritation and lets Nozomi's weak voice do most of the work for him. The knocking stops and the silence that ensues makes him suddenly feel oddly unsafe. Or, no, not unsafe so much as exposed. Trapped.

After all: Nozomi's hemoanima is not his own and she does not have Special Fortunetelling. Luck is now a crapshoot and he can't just assume that things will work out because he is beloved by fate. Anything can happen.

(Not that it will. The Special Defense Unit is full of bleeding hearts and people who care for Nozomi. If anyone dared lay a single finger on any of their precious comrades or friends they would pay dearly, even if it was one of their own. How...trite.)

On the other side of the door is Nozomi again. This time she at least managed to dress his body up in his usual outfit. Gloves, jacket, and glasses. It seems as though she, too, has come to dislike even the thought of accidentally coming into contact with the faintest hint of humanity's filth.

"Come on in, Aotsuki." If Eito sounds terse, he doesn't care. While they can't openly call each other by their names, saying his own surname with a voice that is not his own makes him bristle with barely-contained disgust. She steps inside and he closes and locks the door behind her. Then he turns on his heel and looks up at her, barely managing to fake a smile as she stands awkwardly by her desk. "I see you decided to get dressed."

A bright flush burns across his - her face, her eyes widening behind his glasses. She still is avoiding looking at him, but she's at least not flinching when he talks. "You, uh, your glasses are really strong."

"They do their job."

This manages to get her to look at him—almost disapprovingly, at that. "You might want to be careful with that."

"I know well enough that I could ruin my eyesight." And isn't that the point? To destroy his eyesight to obfuscate the way humanity truly looks? At least then he won't have to look at them any more. "But that isn't why you came by, is it?"

She hums. It's an answer and not an answer at the same time; perfectly passive, like Nozomi often is. When she speaks again, she sounds somehow more and less sure of herself all at once. "I figured we should discuss things some more."

"We should," he agrees without any inflection.

"And you look like you need help with your - my hair." He looks down to see that the poorly-done braid he had hastily wrapped off had come undone and the overall look wound up being less 'exhausted mistake' and more 'half-assed rush job', which is a blow to his already brittle pride.

"Can you stomach it?" He couldn't, were he in her place, but she isn't seeing what he saw so perhaps her version of the monster that is Nozomi Kirifuji is more palatable.

Though, judging by the way her lips and brow twisted into a knot about her nose, probably not. "I'll manage."

"Don't throw up down my back. I don't want to have to get dressed again." He sits down on the couch and watches as she circles him like he's some kind of dangerous animal. When she finally steels her nerves, she still timidly uses her gloved hands to undo his hard work and begins to section off his hair again.

"Sorry about that."

"About what?" He hates empty apologies almost as he hates humans. Vapid words that mean nothing, deflections to push blame about. If she's going to apologize, she had better mean it.

Behind him, Eito can feel her hands tense slightly. He has to fight the instinctual urge to rip away from her grasp and go for her throat. When she does speak, it's oddly measured and stilted, as though she doesn't understand how to explain herself but she also is holding back. "Losing my composure in the Gym when my - when Kurara, Kyoshika, and Omokage arrived for our morning routine. I shouldn't have left you alone to deal with them. They can be...a lot."

That was an understatement. "I managed well enough."

"I heard you left soon after I did." She fumbles a bit longer with braiding, obviously wanting to take off her gloves but also not wanting to.

"I had places to be, things to do." His deflection is sharper than it might need to be, but he isn't going to let Nozomi lecture him on cowardice. "Like getting dressed and understanding how your weapon works."

"Right." At least she has the sense to sound embarrassed about it. There's a moment of silence, punctuated with a sort of toothy grunting noise, and then she continues to braid in earnest. Judging by the speed and sudden increase in finesse, she must have removed at least one of her gloves with her teeth. "I can explain that now, if you want."

He hums, careful to not move his head. He doesn't want her touching him any longer than he has to and undoing all of her hard work would be counterproductive.

"It's a lever-action shotgun that can hold about five shots with one primed at a time. If you need some direction on how to feed and prime it I can draw you a diagram once your hair is done." He doesn't deign to answer her, too focused on the gentle way her hands avoid touching his bare skin, knuckles skimming past the shell of his ear by centimeters but never once making contact, the tension causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. "I have an ammo pouch where I keep my extra ammunition that's stored with the activator for my armor and weapon in the War Room. It should have more than enough for a full battle without needing any kind of restock."

"What kind of ammunition?" He knows what she can offer in battle, he's been on the same front as her a couple times before, but the more detail he has the better. "I know you have the healing one—"

"There's two types of slugs: ampoule and dust." The ease at which she throws around terms makes him almost interested in her. If she knows her gun this well, what kind of life had she lived before she was conscripted into this war? Is she anything like Kurara, whose family is a major arms dealer, or Yugamu, whose family are all assassins? "The ampoule slugs are just what they sound like: they're a glass ampoule filled with a liquid that shatters on impact. The splash zone is pretty large, assuming the actual slug doesn't impact someone."

Having been on the receiving end of a healing ampoule more than once, Eito knows the feeling of a glass slug filled with liquid impacting his chest. Were it not for his hemoanima bolstering his recovery and the potion doing its work, he would have likely fractured something from the blunt force alone. He must make some kind of face because Nozomi lets out a sad little laugh.

"Lucky for you, the only other ampoule slug is the paralytic. Less spread if you hit someone with it, and the agent can work its way into the open wound caused by glass shards." Over, under, over, under. "The dust slug is exclusively the bolstering agent. It's a weaker form of the drug that Omokage made for us to drink but it has a pretty good spread. The fact that it can be inhaled is good too."

"And that...cloud thing?" He won't call it 'an ultimate' like Darumi and Gaku keep insisting, finding the term gauche at best and infantile at worst. "What of that?"

"It charges automatically." Her frankness is refreshing, in an odd way. "After the mechanism has finished distilling the healing liquid and filling a shell, you load it in, fire it into the air, and it aerosolizes the panacea in a large area of effect. Less useful than chugging it yourself but more useful than the ampoule slug."

"How long does it take before it's ready?"

"Anywhere from sixty to ninety seconds?" A long time in a fight. "But it runs independent of your actions. It's constantly refilling so you don't have to manually prepare it, just load it in and fire up."

"Hmm..."

Over, under, over, under.

He wants her hands off of him.

He grins and bears it like he always does.

"There is," he broaches the topic with a falsified hesitancy, "a way to do a ranged attack with my scythe."

"Is there?" He feels her hands tense in his hair, twist and pull slightly too hard. She fumbles, picks up where she left off and resumes her monotonous pattern. "How? I just assumed that your weapon was a solely close-ranged one. Melee, I mean."

"If you focus your hemoanima—the rush of combat surging through you—into the base of the scythe, you can inject your blood into the ground and manifest it outside of your body in jagged, muddy spires." Like fingers, like fangs, grabbing and biting at the enemy. A way to kill without closing distance. "It has a maximum range but overall is useful for when you're poorly positioned and feeling fatigued."

Eito feels Nozomi tie off the braid; senses the weight of the corded hair against his shoulder; hears her slip her gloves back on with a terse little sound of disgust—almost inaudible but for how close she is to him, likely not meant for anyone but herself. He tilts his chin down and looks at the finished braid, then turns to look at her.

"Thank you." It's like pulling teeth.

A naive, hopeful smile spreads across his - her face, something foreign and sincere. How cute; it thinks it's worth loving. How nauseating. "You're welcome." Beneath that effluent burst of gratitude, a thin slime of disgust lurks. He can hear it.

He's heard it in his own voice for weeks now.

Before either of them can speak further, the alarm sounds, proving Eito to be correct when he had assumed today wouldn't be without its incidents.

Eito can't breathe. Every muscle in his body locks in place, hands shaking with tremors he hates. He hates this, hates how everything narrows in on the sounds of the sirens—not the announcement itself, but the sirens—the world muffling around the edges until it's a tinny mess. His weak blood rushes in his ears, flees from his fingers and toes and other extremities, breathing choked and uneven. He can feel his weak heart hammer sledge against his ribs, his pulse a war drum his body demands he march in time to.

They're just sirens. He's heard them dozens of times before. Why is it now that he—?!

Thinking is a struggle amidst the haze of warning lights and klaxons, panic—and it is panic, isn't it? This is a panic attack that he is experiencing, a panic attack that he is fighting control of himself for—stealing his senses and buffeting him like he's a ship in a raging storm. He bites his lip, digs his nails into his arms and palms to try and give himself an anchor.

Focus. Focus. Focus! Stop panicking and just—!

In the hazy corner of his vision he watches as Nozomi staggers a bit and turns to see him in this weakened state.

Don't look at me. Don't look at me with those eyes, that piteous expression, you filthy beast. Turn away, stop looking at me!

Nozomi's body's panic refuses to let him go. He rages against the tide of her body's pathetic pulse, animalistic fury tearing through him, rage at his own impotence and at whatever had decided to shove him into this broken human shell in the first place. It's futile.

As the sound of the sirens fades—the lights flashing still, a reminder and call for anyone who had yet to notice the alert—Eito's hearing slowly comes back. In the tinny distance he can hear Nozomi speak using his voice, saying words of encouragement with sincerity he could never imitate.

"Deep breaths, even breaths. Match what I'm doing. In—" Oh. She's trying to coach him through the panic. "Out." She's making direct eye-contact with him over the rim of his glasses. She is looking at him and not pulling away because her desire to be helpful outweighs any of the disgust his cognitive disorder might induce in her.

"I'm fine." He pulls away from her, brushes his bangs to the side, and smooths his clothes down. "I'm—"

"Aotsuki, I—"

"I am fine." He snaps. She pulls away, looking hurt. "I just...let's go to the War Room before anyone gets any ideas."

For a moment it looks like she's going to talk about it, lips pursing, brows furrowing. Then she does the wise thing and lets go. "Okay."

The walk to the War Room is done in complete silence. Neither of them say a word. Eito buzzes with tension and an energy he wants to let out through violence. Thankfully, at least Nozomi's weapon is capable of doing that—even if the girl usually delegates herself to a supporting role as healer. Him choosing to be more aggressive than she usually is won't raise too many flags.

And, in another stroke of perfectly ordinary luck, Takumi is as late as always to the War Room so Eito can take a moment to familiarize himself with how everyone looks through Nozomi's twisted human vision.

After all: it wouldn't do if he froze up every time he needed to be near someone, especially during combat—or something akin to it.

The gathered members of the Special Defense Unit all look up at Nozomi and Eito as they enter the War Room, attention drawn by the sound of the door opening. Even so, their gazes leave fresh claw marks down his skin and he fights back a shiver of disgust. Then, as quickly as they looked up, their eyes wander again and they all go back to their inane pre-combat rituals and conversations or whatever else they're wasting their time on. Eito takes this moment to try and familiarize himself with the main campus members' appearances while everyone waits on Takumi to arrive.

Humanity, he's realizing, is quite beautiful if you've never seen them as they see themselves. It's likely a mating instinct, to find members of one's own species attractive, but his labeling them beautiful has little to do with romantic or sensual appeal and more to do with a literal qualifier. In the same way that an animal or a landscape or art can be beautiful, humans are beautiful because Eito has never been able to see anything other than their true monstrous nature.

To call them 'beautiful' isn't ignoring their horror, it's a fact; one that he can truly say he keeps separate from his own knowledge of their actual forms. The packaging might have changed, but they are still humans.

They still make him sick, only in a different way.

Like Kyoshika, Tsubasa is broad-shouldered and sturdy. Her hands and arms are covered in fine scars—both cuts and burns—that have long healed but remain behind as a reminder of her love of machines and the dangers therein. Her light hair contrasts with her darker skin, gold on brass, and when she smiles, her eyes crinkle delightedly. She's wearing some kind of small bag on her hip, playing with the strap nervously as she talks with Takemaru. Even so, she seems at ease, surrounded by her companions.

Takemaru is statuesque—something Eito could have assumed based on how often everyone mentioned how big and scary he is—and riddled with ancient looking wounds. Everything about him reminds Eito of pictures of sperm whales who had survived hundreds of attempts on their lives, hides tattered but continuing on. Even as he leaned casually against a wall and gestured with one hand, the other picking at something in his teeth, there wasn't anything outwardly threatening about him. He's majestic in the same way a lion is majestic, a proud boss yawning to show off his giant fangs.

Gaku is gnawing at his nails, long lashes framing his large eyes as he scans the room nervously. Despite—or in spite of—his attitude and general demeanor, he has the same kind of delicate, frail prettiness as Kurara does. Although, unlike Kurara's obviously toned arms, he looks like he shouldn't be capable of holding his heavy Class Weapon. Yet, when he petulant flips off Takemaru when he says something he disagrees with, Eito can spot calluses on his hands that indicate that he is a laborer, despite his refusal to do anything for free. A contradictory mess of untouched and broken that form a complete picture of his lifestyle written in the grooves between his ribs—visible when his shirt rides up as he languidly stretches.

Darumi's hair is as bright as Yugamu's—though less sky blue and more an oceanic cerulean that darkens at the roots—and forms ribbons and trails as she darts around the War Room. Her painted face is startling—she is one of the few who wears such heavy makeup—but there's a strange comfort to the skeletal teeth she painstakingly pencils at the corner of her mouth. Something familiar in a sea of new sensations. The metal in her face and ears glint as she dances about, eyes glimmering with catlike mischief, cackling laugh matching her appearance. Even so, Eito can't help but recognize a liar when he sees one; even stripped of his righteous eyes as he is, Darumi's laughter is as real as Nozomi's thin smile or his own gentle demeanor.

Shouma brings to mind an extinct breed of dog that used to exist hundreds of years ago. A bug-eyed, snub-nosed, brachyphilic mess of an animal whose health issues made them difficult to care for and whose extreme gene selection was walked back to something healthier before eventually owning a dog was so prohibitively expensive and regulated that niche breeds fell out of practice for sturdier and healthier animals. Something about his flat nose and large, unblinking, wet eyes combined with his short stature and standing off in a corner by himself reminds Eito of a photo of that dog breed, the wall-eyed thing ugly and adorable in a way that made him angry that humanity had caused such issues for something for no reasons aside from aesthetic preference and showmanship. Maybe the dog comparison is bolstered by his Class Weapon's shape, but it hardly matters in this moment.

After acquainting himself with the new faces, he turns to see what everyone else is doing while they all wait for Takumi, trying to quiet the fluttering remains of his borrowed body's traitorous panic.

Kyoshika and Kurara are off to the side having an animated discussion about something inane. Yugamu is lounging languidly across a chair as he watches the advancing troops on one of the monitors. Nozomi has stepped far away from anyone else, eyes flickering across the room as she, too, catalogs everyone's appearances so she isn't stymied by being surrounded by monsters.

If there's any consolation with regards to having to fight as Nozomi instead of himself, it's that Takumi likes to keep Nozomi close to himself—Eito too, oddly enough, though sometimes he's put on one of the other fronts—on the primary defensive line so he won't have to worry too much about being startled by more than one new face.

It's a pittance but—

Takumi thunders in, sweating slightly, and ducks his head in apology. "Got held up."

"Shall we?" Eito finds himself asking, forgetting for a brief moment that he is not himself.

No one comments on what must be a slightly out of character action on 'Nozomi's' behalf and instead just grabs their Infusers and quickly transforms. Eito, too, activates Nozomi's Artificial Class Armor and puts on the ammo pouch, pulling one red and five yellow slugs to load into her weapon. The bolstering dust slug is primed into the slide and the remaining paralytic ampoules are loaded for additional shots.

Eito is ready to splatter Invader guts and brains all over the quad, if only to purge the tension that crawls along his nervous system. He wants to feel in control. He wants to know if killing an enemy feels the same at range with a gun as it does in close quarters with his scythe.

They deploy and Eito quickly surveys the battlefield before determining that this is, at best, a scouting party for a later Commander attack. The Lesser Invaders outnumber the Greater Invaders of all types five-to-one, which means that this isn't a serious attack force.

He clicks his tongue in disappointment. Takumi looks at him strangely. "You okay?"

"Hm?" Oh. He must be wearing a sour expression. "Yes, I'm alright. Thanks for asking."

When he smiles, it's nearly blinding. Eito can almost see a halo behind his head, glinting against the headpiece of his Class Armor. Eito smiles back. "That's good. You looked...really bad earlier."

"I'm fine now." The less he talks to Takumi, the better.

On the other side of him, Eito watches as Nozomi lands, followed by Gaku. She flinches and puts some distance between them, fingers clenching and unclenching around her scythe with nervous tension.

He doesn't wait for the signal, body a coiled spring. Adrenaline surges and, when the first Invader crosses the line designating the Last Defense Academy's defensive zone, he launches himself forward into the cloud of bolstering agent he had shot at the ground in his path.

Nozomi's body might not have stamina, but it does have power and control. She's built a bit like a sprinting predator, which means she's actually fairly good at running in sharp bursts. With the bolstering agent in his weak, borrowed lungs, he closes distance with the advancing line and begins to empty his gun into the enemy.

First shot. The kick is deceptively strong but the power the weapon holds is well worth it. He's going to have to learn how to handle the striking against his shoulder. Firing it one-handed like he had with the bolstering agent won't be feasible in the long run if he wants to be accurate and also not sprain or break his wrist.

Second shot. The sturdy ampoule impacting a Lesser Invader's skull—caving it in and shattering into an explosion of glass, gore, blood, and paralytic—is just like fireworks. Glittering shards, brilliant crimson, black globs, and grey-pink chunks that are coated in fluids of various other colors that mark the Invaders as alien spray starburst on the battlefield. It's not quite the same as cutting them in half with the blade of his scythe but it isn't dissatisfactory. In fact, it's like a macabre painting, the distance enjoyable in it's own right.

Third shot. Someone—likely Takumi—is standing at his side, cutting away at the army surrounding them. That means that Nozomi and Gaku are hanging back, Gaku out of cowardice and strategy while Nozomi's reticence is likely borne from her new combative role and unfamiliarity with his weapon. Whatever, that doesn't matter to Eito in the moment. What matters is the adrenaline and relieving all his pent-up aggression without raising any flags.

Fourth shot. He dodges one of the giant Greater Invader's large fists and watches as the paralytic does its work. The beast halts, gaping wounds vomiting blood down the front of its chest and out of its neck. Before Eito can fire on it a second time—or strike it with the butt of his weapon—Takumi lunges forward and skewers the thing through the eye-socket, his burning-bright blade disappearing up to the guard in the thing's skull before withdrawing with a wet sucking noise. The beast drops to the ground and a myriad of Lesser Invaders swarm over it like ravenous ants only to be cut down by Takumi's wide swings.

(It would be so easy to 'accidentally' hit Takumi and let him die.)

(It wouldn't be worth it. It wouldn't have any staying power. He'd just be scooped up, put together, and deployed again without any consequences.)

(It would only draw attention to himself.)

Fifth shot. The flying Greater Invader drops to the ground as its senses leave it and this time Eito manages to be the one to finish it off. The sensation of its strange, soft skull caving under the wide butt of his weapon is different than using his scythe, but certainly pleasant. He just could do without needing to wipe off the remains before he shoulders the gun again. Getting any liquids on his clothes is awful and irritating and he would rather die than touch anything that came from these things.

He racks the weapon to clear the slide and quickly backpedals to reload; five more paralytic ampoules with one bolstering slug primed. Lesser Invaders claw at his retreating form but he kicks to the side and fires off his second slug of the bolstering agent, taking a deep breath before jumping into the fray again.

A beep at his waist tells him that the aerosolized panacea is ready. He ignores it to fire at the enemy some more.

He can hear, through the haze of combat sounds and his own pulse, the calls of the rest of the Special Defense Unit barking across the open comms unit. Idle chitchat and back and forth that barely registers in his awareness past a mild annoyance.

"Aotsuki, behind with gun!" Followed by the sound of Maruko's weapon unloading a pint of his blood into a clump of Invaders.

"On your left you pea-brained moron!" Kurara, seconds before Kyoshika makes a pained noise. "What the fuck did I say?!"

"Let's fuckin' go!" The screaming sound of Takemaru's bike and his booming laughter.

"Defenses breached, Kurara! Goin' to halt the progression." Yugamu's calm voice didn't betray how hectic their front truly must be.

"Park your fat ass in front of my goddamn walls and do something useful you waste of fucking space!" Kurara again, likely to Shouma.

"O-on it!" And his predictable reply.

"Tsubasa-dono! A pick-me-up?" Kyoshika plaintively begs.

"Got you covered!" Despite it all, Tsubasa sounds composed.

Eito, meanwhile, is happily blowing the brains out of every Invader in his path. Holes in their heads, in their abdomens, in every available part of them. Eyeballs knocked from sockets, shards of glass gouging out and spilling organs across the ground, even limbs flopping around like severed octopus tentacles. It's cathartic. He needs this.

He needs to feel in control.

"Kirifuji! We need aid over here!" Behind him—not even across the comms but physically behind him—Takumi shouts for his attention. Gaku moans around what sounds like a mouthful of blood and he can hear Nozomi choking and coughing.

Eito turns to look at the call for aid, unsure how to proceed or if he even wants to help them.

Gaku and Nozomi have been hit hard by one of the Greater Invaders—one of the large shield breaker ones—and it looks like Nozomi might have some broken ribs by the way she's doubled over on herself as she staggers to her feet. Gaku, on the other hand, is very visibly dealing with a smashed-in face, a few loose teeth spilling from his bloodied mouth as he sobs. Nozomi props herself up on her scythe and Gaku is trying to push himself upright while Takumi fends off the hordes alone to protect his fallen comrades.

In front of Eito, the final wave advances on their front. Behind him, two of his unit are badly injured and the third is rapidly losing ground.

He could help them. That's what Nozomi's job is on the battlefield: she's the medic. And he is, for all intents and purposes, Nozomi. He is the Special Defense Unit's medic. He should help them.

He doesn't want to.

(He doesn't have a choice.)

Removing the filled shell from the device on his waist—and noting the way a second automatically feeds into the mechanism at the base from a gravity-fed rail system towards the top—he racks his gun again and feeds the panacea into the slide. Then he angles his shot and fires.

The shell flies in a wide arc. It bursts after a brief moment and a large cloud of greenish dust rains down over the area that Nozomi, Gaku, and Takumi are in. As that happens, with a mild noise of irritation, he cocks his weapon and leaps into the fray, paralyzing the closest Greater Invaders with zero wasted movement. His very presence seems to bolster the healing ability of the panacea he had just covered them in, Takumi's fatigue leaving him in time for him to quickly decapitate the Invaders Eito had incapacitated. Nozomi's breathing evens out and Gaku scrubs at his nose with the back of his hand, blood painting his gloves with snotty maroon streaks as he hoists his gun up again.

"Th-thanks, Kirifuji." Gaku doesn't even make a pass at him as he fires a direct line into some nearby Invaders, the hemoanima returning to his body with interest. "That fucking sucked!"

"Sorry it took me so long, Maruko." He isn't. He would have let them die if it hadn't been an un-Nozomi thing to do. "I'm not used to being a frontline fighter but I wanted to try and—"

"Stop kowtowing to the fucking pleb and just kill the damn Invaders! I want to actually have a moment to breathe!"

"Shut the hell up, Oosuzuki!" Gaku snaps at her over the comms. "I just got my teeth punched out of my goddamn face. Let me bitch a little!"

"I can remove the rest of them if you like," Yugamu offers. Judging by Gaku's shudder, the idea makes him nauseous and more than a little upset. "Or I can just kill you and let the Revive-o-Matic put you together with all thirty-two of them intact."

"Guys!" Takumi interrupts. "Focus up!"

"Yeah," Tsubasa adds, "our side is almost clear so if anyone needs some help, I'm running aid."

"Tsubasa Crazy Taxi Service, featuring the Hit and Run style gameplay you all know and love!" Darumi's loud excitement is so sharp that everyone flinches. "Mulch them, gib them, grind them into your undercarriage and against your bumper and grill! Extra points if the pedestrian is a child!"

Tsubasa stifles a heave, the comms cutting off as she manually mutes herself. Eito's attention quickly snaps back to combat as he blows the top off a flying Greater Invader, the disk lower half skidding across the dirt and leaving a wet smear as it goes. Disgusting.

Takumi cleaves a cluster of Lesser Invaders in twain and calls out, "Headcount?"

"We have seven on our end, mostly smaller Greater!" Kurara barks, having assigned herself the lead on their front.

"Two clumps of Darumarr and dropping!" Darumi chirps from her end, using her and Gaku's names for the footsoldiers.

"Down to a handful, mix of Greater and Lesser!" Takumi impales one of the ranged Greater Invaders through the chest. "Let's finish this!" With a cry, he strikes at the remaining Invaders in his reach, pulping them like meat in a blender.

To his side, Gaku braces himself and aims upwards. "Awright! Let's fucking go! Eat shit and die!" A rain of his hemoanima, sharpened into lethal spires, impales what few Invaders Takumi's attack didn't destroy, as he laughs hysterically with blood loss and his usual feverish battle-high.

In the distance, echoing across the open comms, Eito can hear Shouma yelling as a crimson laser of pure hemoanima obliterating the remaining troops on his front. And, on the third front, Darumi's mic picks up the sound of Takemaru's engine revving and Tsubasa's missiles detonating, misting the remains.

Silence follows. Eito's weak pulse stills. His breathing slows. Combat is over.

"Gen check?" Takumi asks.

"Seventy-six and solid," Kurara replies without a second's delay. "Hour's charge at worst."

"Any manual repairs needed?"

"None that I can tell!" Tsubasa finally joins back in on the conversation, voice raw from likely vomiting from stress. "Though the quad is pretty messy."

"Let the fucking drones clean up," Kurara sniffs. "I'm going to take a fucking bath. If any of you perverts try anything I'll castrate you with a fucking plastic spoon."

"Man," Gaku whines, whistling around his missing teeth, "I'm starving again but my jaw..."

"Just die!" Darumi offers, with no tact and too much delight. "That'll fix it!"

"Fuck no!" The coward predictably shoots back. "I like not being dead, thank you!"

"Your teeth won't just grow back," Yugamu points out, "and I can make it so painless you'll barely even realize you're gone."

"I said no! Christssake...fucking freak."

As everyone else breaks down into chatter and cross-talk, Eito just looks out at the mass of corpses on the battlefield and breathes. In—mouth watering with the precursor to bile and the taste of blood—and out—lungs weak and barely able to alleviate the choking hunger for more oxygen. In—red puddles beneath comic book splatterpunk corpses, viscera dark and horrible in contrast, wartime pop art made manifest—and out—in his mind's eye he tries to remember what the Special Defense Unit looked like before he lost his ability to see the truth, the ghost of their monstrous forms overwritten by the way they look to everyone else. In—he hates this—and out—he feels better though.

"Nozomi?" His own soft voice hoarsely grabs his attention; he flinches against his will. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Aotsuki. Thanks for asking but there's no need to worry." Is he still on open mic? Is she on open mic? He refuses to look at her in this moment, too focused on the carnage they wreaked on the invading forces and the drones grabbing corpses to drop them into the Wall of Fire, incinerating them. If he looks at her, if he makes eye-contact, then the fact of the matter will settle further and further into his borrowed bones. He needs to not think about it.

This isn't healthy but neither is her body.

How many days will he have to exist as 'Nozomi'?

(He wants to blow Nozomi's brains out, just to see what his own corpse looks like. Curiosity, surely, and maybe also rage.)

"You were certainly...aggressive..." The judgement in her voice is pointed, thorns against his skin. Irritating.

"I don't like sirens," his answer is coded and layered, "so I wanted to blow off some steam."

"You—"

"Is there a point to this, Aotsuki?" Do you have anything to say that can't be said in private? Is this the fucking time for it? "I'm a little tired."

Irritation is chased by resignation, exhaustion holding up the rear. She is so expressive with his face and he hates it. All those years learning how to school his expressions and she's failing to put any effort into it, failing at playing at being him. "What time would be good for you?"

He smiles at her with her teeth but not her eyes. "Try tomorrow. Lunchtime?" He has to train with Nozomi's friends in the morning. Breakfast will replenish his energy. He needs to make more shells for her weapon. His itinerary is packed. "We can chat while we eat." And nobody will be suspicious about the two of them spending so much time together. Nobody will look twice at them choosing to hang out in the Cafeteria.

"Of course. I look forward to it." The way the words squeeze out of her mouth makes it very clear that she would rather get their discussion over with now. Tough.

"It's a date!" The word burns coming out. He hates that this is something she would say, chipper coat of fake cheer toxic on his tongue. "Goodnight, Aotsuki."

"Sleep well, Nozomi."

His dinner tastes like ash and not even a boiling hot shower can make him feel clean. Misery wraps fingers around his throat and chokes any comfort from his body.

He is, after all, wearing an ill-fitted suit. One he can't strip out of, one sewed against his soul. It itches, burns, and he wishes he had his scythe so he could carve it away from his senses and find some modicum of relief.

Nozomi's pathetic hemoanima steals heat from her weak body as he lays in bed and begs fate that his dreams will be nothing.

—

The first thing Eito notices when he wakes up is how strange his breathing sounds. It's almost raspy, weak and thin as he inhales and shuddering as he exhales. He sucks in air, holds it until his vision swims with colors and shapes, then expels the air in a sharp burst.

His lungs scream at him, chest heaving shaking stuttering with a weak rabbit heartbeat and nausea clenching at his ribs.

The second thing Eito notices is the smell, namely: that there is one at all. It's soft and sweet, vanilla and gardenia. Cloying, even faint as it might be. It tickles the back of his throat, agonizes his oddly weak lungs with a half-assed coughing fit. Doubled over, fist jammed against his teeth, he blinks tears from his eyes.

Pauses.

Comprehends.

Compartmentalizes.

Lays in bed a few moments more.

The third thing Eito notices is—

Banging on his door. A rapid panic, bang bang bang bang, amen break misplaced. Or, he muses gently as he doesn't bother getting up just yet, maybe more apt than I'd like.

(Bang bang bang bang!)

Weak lungs pull air in. A weak heart pumps anxiety through shaking limbs. Reprehensible body shaking as he tries to steel himself to exit bed at long, long last.

(Bang bang bang bang bang!)

Whoever is on the other side of the door better hope that Takumi is elsewhere. Wouldn't want our leader to lose his head so early in the game.

(Bang! Bang! Bang!)

"I'll be right there!" He makes sure to shout extra-loud so as to be heard.

The banging stops. Good.

As the door swings open slowly and ominously—reminding Eito of a castle gate, maintenance fallen by the wayside, hinges screaming slow, low wails of warning—a thought occurs to him:

Maybe he should have changed into something instead of opening the door as-is.

Ah well...too late to worry now.

He tilts his head up and offers the person on the other side of the door his signature masked smile. "Yes?"

Looking down at him, squinting blearily, Eito's own face scrunches up in horror. "Please let me in, N-Nozomi."

"Of course. Come on in, Aotsuki." He steps aside and Eito's body enters. The door is closed behind him.

A beat. Eito's smile tightens, thins, and flattens. "So..." Eito listens to his own voice trail off timidly, unsure of what should be said.

Standing at the desk, Eito watches himself lean a—nearly-bare, only protected from the outside by his pajama pants—hip against the furniture and fall into a heavy silence. A moment passes. Another. A third.

Eito is very patient.

Eventually, Eito's body speaks up. "Aotsuki?" That confirms it.

Eito smiles with Nozomi's mouth, her pert lips gentle where his are sharp, and offers himself a slight bow. "Yeah. Honestly, I'm glad there's not more people involved."

Nozomi winces and turns her face away from him as she replies with an almost confused, "Huh?"

"If there had been more people swapping bodies than just us, well it would have been chaos, wouldn't it?" It's far easier to sell his gentle shtick using Nozomi's thin, breathy voice. She sounds pitiful, even without his own mask plastered over the base. "If it's just the two of us, then it's self-contained."

"...True." Nozomi takes a while to respond. A thought occurs to Eito and he chances a guess.

"Are you alright?" There. Nozomi flinches when he speaks, clutching her ungloved hands against her chest in her fear. When not grabbing for her heart, they cover her mouth and nose in a way that makes Eito think about bending over a toilet to empty his stomach.

And she won't look at him. She won't use his eyes to look at her own face.

"What do you mean?" Her own forced cheer sounds plastic spilling from his mouth in his voice. Eito smothers the part of him that feels mocked. She is ignorant, not aggressive. He can hate her for what she's doing, not what he thinks she might do.

He is better than them, after all. They're aimless monsters and he has a just cause.

"You keep startling whenever I speak up. You are constantly covering my - your nose and mouth when you're not talking." Each fact laid down, a two-by-four bridging a small pit, and he crosses precariously. The line between his truth and the lie he's selling the Special Defense Unit can be thin and he's wobbling on the best of days. "You won't look at me."

Guilty—like he knew she would be—Nozomi makes shaky eye-contact with him. Without his glasses distorting the view, his blue eyes are wide and his pupils are blown with fear. A thin crust mars the corner of his mouth.

Wait.

She isn't wearing his glasses.

No wonder she won't look at him.

"I..." She begins to say, then trails off.

—

Nozomi jolts awake from a dream she can barely remember, heart hammering horror against her ribs. She takes in one shaky breath after another and keeps her eyes closed to help soothe her frayed nerves.

Her lungs fill and fill and fill in a way that they haven't since she first agreed to help her mother. Her chest is suddenly missing the heavy stone that is her cryptoglobin transfusion crushing her ribs and lungs and heart into flat things that struggle to operate on the best of days. Her body feels flush and warm—not feverish but certainly more alive than her own cooler pallor—and there's an almost comforting heat to her pulse. It distracts herself from the way she woke up.

Then she opens her eyes.

White, sterile, and empty. It isn't her room. It can't be her room because where are her things? The smell of sanitizer, of germ-free cleanliness and impersonal emptiness fills her nose and her burning strong heart picks back up, a centipede of ice gripping her spine even as her ears rush with gouts of fear like fire. Phantom sirens scream as she tries to remember where—

It's not her room because the stuffed animals that Moko had made her as gifts weren't by her side. It's not the hospital because there's no IV in her arm, no tubes in her nose, no clamp on her finger to measure her rampaging pulse.

But it smells—

It looks like—

Nozomi bolts from the bed and empties her stomach in the toilet, mouth watering in the aftershocks while she coughs pathetic strands of vomit-flecked spittle against a bleach-scented bowl. Sweat mats her bangs against her forehead. She coughs again and again and again, stomach clenching around emptiness as her panic ebbs and flows like the ocean tide. Is she still dreaming? Had the dream been prophetic? Or something else?

(Fire and heat. Dying and begging for comfort. Someone gently brushing sweat-slicked bangs away from a feverish forehead. Whispering gentle kindness, love and affection. A hand in hers, even as the world ended. Heat and light, like an atom bomb tinged with regret and an apology.)

When the nausea subsides, snot dripping down her nose, she staggers to the sink and starts to rinse her mouth out and scrub at her skin. She feels vile and shaky, like a newborn deer, hands trembling even as she scoops water out of the flowing tap to rinse the taste of anxiety and stomach acid away. Idly, she peels her bangs away from her forehead, finally looking up at the bathroom mirror to see if she needs a shower before she leaves to train with her friends.

In the mirror she sees Aotsuki, pale and sweaty, spit and vomit crusted at the corner of his mouth, gently trying to peel his bangs away from his forehead. His eyes move with her vision, flickering in confusion. As she expresses the disorientation she's feeling on her face, the reflection of Aotsuki also frowns, brows furrowing and pinching as his lips twists into an ugly knot.

She tears out of Aotsuki's room moments after, chased by questions she doesn't have the answer to.

Free from the sterility of Aotsuki's room, the Last Defense Academy feels wonderful in the cool morning air. Nobody is awake just yet—Nozomi is an early riser on the best of days and she had just suffered a pretty awful nightmare—so it's her, the breaking dawn, any life within the Wall of Fire, and her thoughts. Lingering on the gentle breeze is a pervasive scent of rot and filth. Garbage, motor oil, fecal matter, burning hair, roadkill, vinegar, all faint wafts that makes her almost want to stop and figure out what she's smelling even as she power-walks her way back to her own room.

She doesn't have time to chase specters. She's not even in her own body.

She has to make sure that this isn't some kind of Invader plot.

Hammering on her own door feels novel. She knows she doesn't lock her door—a holdover from when she was at Second to Last Defense Academy, where the five of them trusted each other implicitly—but it feels...rude to just barge in on someone. Especially considering if someone was watching, they'd see Aotsuki forcing his way into Nozomi's room, and that's a bad look.

Nobody answers. She knocks harder.

"I'll be right there!" Her own voice, unbothered and clear, answers her panic. The shock is enough to halt her frenzy, another thought blossoming to life and spreading climbing vines across every corner of her mind, stealing nutrients away to draw attention to itself.

Kyoshika had once told her about a manga she had read that had helped her understand some of the nuanced aspects of her own gender. It was about a man who was enamored with a girl who came to the convenience store he worked at with regularity and how, one day, he woke up in her body and didn't know how to cope. Being a girl was horrifying and new and the societal pressures and social demands of being perceived female wrung him out. He wanted to know if she was okay, if everything was fine, so eventually he tracked down his body at the convenience store he worked at and realized something horrible.

He wasn't who he thought he was. He was, in fact, a fragment of the girl made to shelter her from the crushing demands of being a girl. He had never swapped bodies, he just was taking charge of their body while she recovered from the depression that was threatening her life.

Was she Nozomi or was she an aspect of Nozomi that Aotsuki had made in a moment of weakness to shelter himself from something she was unaware of? Is she who she thinks she is or is she a fictional being, a mask being worn by someone else?

The door opens and all of those thoughts leave her once more, fleeing in the face of herself.

Through the door, her own voice had sounded papery and wheezing, bubbly, as though she had lungfuls of fluid choking the words before they left her mouth. They'd been intelligible but muffled and Nozomi had assumed it had been the door itself that was the problem.

It isn't the door.

Describing what she's seeing is like trying to explain what her mother's research did on a technical level without being able to use technical words. It looks like a person should. It has a head covered in Nozomi's own purple-silver hair. Nozomi's lilac eyes stare up at her, emphasizing the height difference between her and Aotsuki. It has arms and legs—or she can assume it has legs, as they're indistinguishable from the mass of meat and flesh and metal that it drags beneath it like a macabre slug. Its lungs and intestines hang outside its stomach, torn along the wound she got all those years ago. Blood cascades down its mouth as it smiles a very Nozomi smile. Even that is an incomplete explanation of its mirage-like warbling form, impossible and incomprehensible in a way she struggles to even articulate to herself.

It smells like gasoline and medical-grade antiseptic and metal and fire and blood. She has to fight another wave of bile as it knocks against the back of her throat.

Its head tilts. From its bleeding mouth, a question bubbles forth, "Yes?" That's her voice, distorted with liquid and death and the sounds of metal on metal and screaming.

Nozomi flinches and prays whoever is in her body doesn't notice. Now isn't the time to falter. "Please let me in, N-Nozomi." Her voice catches on her own name, doing her best to not let her confusion or fear catch and pull the statement into a question.

The thing in her room nods, splattering the ground in fluids too foul to name. Nozomi covers her mouth and nose, praying she won't break in front of whoever this is. "Of course. Come on in, Aotsuki." It steps further in, leaving the door wide open. The doorknob is coated in slime and blood, the stench of the thing lingering even as it rapidly dries, making Nozomi's stomach roil and turn.

Once inside, she doesn't know how to proceed. It is her room. She can see her stuffed animals, her desk, her things. All of her possessions covered in the same viscous, noxious fluid that the thing secretes. The air is choked in its smell and it makes her lightheaded trying to breathe through her mouth so she doesn't hold her breath to escape the rancid miasma. "So..." How does she even ask? How do you ask 'Are you Aotsuki? Did we swap bodies?' It's like a cosmic joke.

It's almost cosmic horror.

She leans against her desk and looks at anything that isn't whatever the thing that is supposedly her. It doesn't help. Silence joins the slime coating her room and Nozomi breathes slowly to try and lower her heartbeat.

Eventually she just goes for it. "Aotsuki?"

The thing that might be her smiles with a mouth like hers and grins a mouthful of shattered, bloody glass. "Yeah. Honestly, I'm glad there's not more people involved."

What? "Huh?"

"If there had been more people swapping bodies than just us, well it would have been chaos, wouldn't it?" The idea that it was more than just herself and Aotsuki hadn't occurred to her in her panic but, as Aotsuki lays it out as if it has been a real possibility, the thought alone causes ice to creep up her spine. Thinking about it now, if everyone had swapped around, it would be almost impossible to coordinate and fight defensive battles. "If it's just the two of us, then it's self-contained." Again, a calm and objective truth.

What's wrong with her? Why is she so incapable of getting herself together? Why does her body look like a horrible monster, a reminder of the day she lost so much of herself? Aotsuki is put-together, already figuring out their situation. Why can't she do the same?

Wait. Aotsuki had said something and she's been quiet the whole time. She forces Aotsuki's mouth around words and begs that she doesn't heave again. "...True."

Aotsuki tilts the thing's head, mouth pulling into an exaggerated frown. Blood-crusted lashes narrow as he bubbles out a question. "Are you alright?"

Shit. He must have noticed the way she's been acting, flinching away every time he talks. She needs to recover and save face. "What do you mean?" Maybe he will—

"You keep startling whenever I speak up. You are constantly covering my - your nose and mouth when you're not talking. You won't look at me." The way he cuts through to the meat of her makes her clench Aotsuki's teeth so hard she's worried they might crack. A tension headache plays at the back of her skull. To be so obviously seen is...

She tries to make eye-contact with what must be herself. It's hard. It's agonizing, like pulling teeth. Like pulling fingernails. Every part of this thing she's seeing is almost tailor-made to upset her, a moment from her past that haunts her on the best of days made manifest as a shambling corpse. "I..."

"Why aren't you wearing my glasses?" He cuts her off before she can even try and formulate an excuse.

It's a good thing too. The confusion Nozomi is feeling stops her from spiraling into a self loathing nosedive. "You - glasses? Your vision is fine."

The smile that Aotsuki puts on her face is unkind. Even with all of the monstrosity of whatever is going on, somehow there is enough of Nozomi in the thing for her to feel disconcerted seeing an expression that vicious on it. "It is," he concedes, "but that's not the point of my glasses."

Wearing glasses you don't need makes it harder to see.

Harder to see...

"Oh!" Wait. "Oh?"

"What does this body look like to you, Nozomi?" Something in Aotsuki's tone changes. It becomes brittle and almost pointed, a scalpel cutting to the meat of the problem. If she pressed, would it snap? Would the shrapnel injure them both?

"It—" If what he's asking is any indication, then maybe... "A bit like the victim of a car accident. Torn like this," Nozomi gestures down the gash where her scar should be on her body, "organs falling out. Lower half is a mess, slimy and..." Aotsuki's smile tightens. "Blood everywhere. Everywhere." She emphasizes.

"I assume the smell and sound is also awful?" She blinks in surprise, too confused to be afraid of or nauseated by him in this moment. "I thought so."

"What do you mean?" She closes the distance between them, grabs at him with her bare hands then recoils as the sensation and overwhelming smell makes her immediately regret it.

"Well, I assumed since we had switched bodies that perhaps it would have followed my brain, but it seems as though this is less logical than I would have first thought." He hums, unbothered by her reaction to touching him. "I believe you know that I was hospitalized for a lot of my childhood?"

She didn't. Her group barely got along with the rest of the Special Defense Unit, even after the whole mess with Kurara and Ginzaki and the curry. She hasn't had a chance to learn anything about them past how they fight. There hasn't been a need yet.

He takes her silence for a negative. "I suffer from a...particular cognitive disorder. It's a type of agnosia that makes humans appear like revolting monsters, their scent and sound alone enough to put me off eating, let alone spending extended periods of time around them. I am the only person I have ever been able to properly perceive as normal. And now you are suffering from that very same disorder because you are inhabiting my brain."

"A-agnosia?" Agnosia is an inability to distinguish things through one's senses. That his senses are so specifically distorted that it's only humans that trigger this specific revulsion is strange but— "We've always looked like this to you?"

He doesn't answer. He just smiles, silent and pleasant.

The emotion that presses against her chest in that moment isn't pity. It isn't even in the neighborhood. Instead she feels anger, frustration. Did he not trust the Special Defense Unit enough to ask for accommodations, like they seem to have given to Tsubasa for her nausea? He's been here for a month now. Had it never once occurred to him that his unit would work with him to make his time at Last Defense Academy easier? Is he so stubborn that he would—

Aotsuki sighs. It's like a bubbling pot of stew, thick and wet. "Don't make that face." What face is she making? Normally she has such fine control over her expressions and still right now she... "I chose not to tell everyone. How would I explain all of that without having to describe how revolting and abhorrent it is to be in a room full of them? I mean," he waves a hand about, shattered wrist hanging limply and flopping with the movement, "I had years to get used to tolerating it. You are only dealing with 'me' and look how fast you've fallen apart."

His cutting words smart. She fights her first urge to fight back, choosing instead to be kind, nice, understanding. "I see." The smile he gives her somehow lets her know exactly what he thinks of that blasé dismissal.

"But that does beg the question of how this happened in the first place. And why us?" He gently curls his dripping fingers beneath his blood-soaked chin, humming gently in thought. "If it was everyone, I could definitively say it was some sort of hemoanima-related mess, but two of us?"

"It wouldn't be hemoanima anyway." Nozomi is surprised when she interjects. She didn't think before she spoke, the words slipping out almost involuntarily. Maybe it's her nerves, maybe it's the tension of the whole situation, and maybe it's that she's looking at her stuffed animals and frustrated that the coat of agnosia-induced slime and ooze makes holding them for comfort nigh impossible. Regardless, her mouth moves before her mind can comb through her words, make them more palatable, not interrupt Aotsuki when he's speaking.

He seems to not mind, instead just raising an eyebrow and making a gross, phlegmy rattling noise that must be a hum of interest. "Oh?"

"My hemoanima isn't—" now that she's actively speaking, now that her head is in the game, she stops herself from tipping her hand too far, "—it's weaker than everyone else's. It's why I have the Artificial Class Armor and weapon that Nigou made. If it was something related to hemoanima, it wouldn't have included me." Just because Aotsuki had shared something personal—revealed his condition to her out of some measure of necessity—didn't mean he was privy to her life's story.

Her mother's experiments with cryptoglobin and its immediate differences marking her as Other from the rest of the Special Defense Unit were hers and hers alone. Although...she might need to inform him about rejection symptoms if he starts to look too wan.

Not that she's really capable of gauging that at this time.

Aotsuki clutches at his heart, mottled and bruising fist disappearing into a softened, rotting patê of muscle and fat as he processes what she's just said. "I had wondered what was off when I woke up. The difference is oddly noticeable." She stares at a point above his head, the focus point allowing her to feign as though she's looking at him without actually taking in too much of the monster in front of her. "It's all in the heart, really. And the lungs."

That would track. "Yeah..."

The fire in her veins, the way her heart hammers a drumbeat tempo against her ribs; it's hemoanima. Tears well in her eyes and she pushes them down with even breaths.

The room hums with ambience and the awful sound of Nozomi's body's crushed and bubbly breathing. Her nose is flooded with the scent of metal and meat and fire and sepsis and bleach. She does her best to try and steel herself.

If Nozomi's own body looks, sounds, and smells like this, the rest must be as horrific, and she's going to have to deal with it.

"What do we tell Sumino?" They can't just stand here forever, idly trying to figure out what the problem is with just the two of them. Many hands make light work and two minds are better than one. Bringing everyone into the fold—especially their de facto leader—would surely reduce the load.

"Nothing." The way the word leaves his mouth paralyzes her like a single shot from her gun. She actually snaps her eyes back onto his messy, agonized face to try and figure out why. "There is no reason to involve Takumi or the others. I highly doubt they could help us, all things considered."

"What does that mean?" She feels thin and brittle, worn out and stretched over Aotsuki's larger frame, her emotions torn to the breaking point. Maybe that's why she's just incapable of being nice.

Aotsuki seems to be unbothered by her rudeness at least. He smiles at her, broken glass spilling blood and chunks of gum and tongue all down his chin, and cordially answers her as if she hadn't just been unbearably sharp and aggressive. "If we tell everyone that the two of us have swapped bodies, what do you think would happen?"

"They would help us find a solution, surely?"

The way his eyes become crescents, thin and sharp daggers of lilac and silver, gives her pause. "Which would take away from our daily efforts to defend the Academy. That, in turn, could lead to further conflict within our ranks, further collapse of the already tenuous structure we have established, and then the Invaders would wipe us all out and kill all of humanity." There's something strange there, in the hissing-screaming-bubbling of Aotsuki's borrowed voice, that almost sounds hungry. Like he had said something he had strong opinions about but she just is incapable of properly parsing through the visceral overstimulation.

"What if they found a solution?" She counters. "Omokage is well-versed in the medical field and, while I am part of the problem, I have no qualms about both aiding in research or experimentation and in volunteering myself as a test subject."

"First off," Aotsuki counters, jaw clenched tight enough to spill a waterfall of blood down his neck, "that is my body you would be volunteering to be subject to Yugamu's tendencies." She wants to interrupt, bristling at his callous dismissal of her friend's talents by way of his proclivities, but he barely gives her a crack to worm her way into the discussion as he barrels onward. "Second, even if it wound up only being Yugamu and yourself distracted by the whole...situation we have going on, he is one of the best people we have at crowd control and you, while in my body, are almost necessary to help in thinning the numbers of whatever front you are on. Both of you wearing yourselves out trying to solve a problem that may resolve itself on its own is foolish."

"And third?" She can't argue his desire to not have her volunteer his body for medical testing. That's fair enough. But to dismiss the idea of asking for help on the basis of 'it would draw attention away from focusing on our survival' is—

"What makes you think I have a third point?"

"Because you—!" Nozomi almost can't see for the way that anger digs its ugly claws into her ribs and wrenches. Carefully, slowly, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. In. Out. When she opens her eyes again, she's greeted by the same horrors as before, only the horrors seem to be watching her with a measure of bemused confusion on his borrowed face. "Never mind. What do you suggest we do then, since talking to the others is out of the question?"

"Wait it out."

What is she supposed to say to that? "Sit back and do nothing?"

"Oh, you misunderstand," Aotsuki corrects her, distorted voice gentle as though she's a child, over-enunciating for the sake of clarity, "we will be doing something, we just also will be waiting out whatever caused this. It happened so suddenly, so surely it will be fixed as abruptly, right?"

"That's an assumption though."

"Assumptions are all we have right now. The best we can do is go on with our new normal and hope that, before day one hundred rolls around, we will be put back in our own bodies."

As much as she wants to argue—the uglier parts of her rearing their heads, clawing at their cage and screaming of unfairness and irritation—she can't find fault in his logic. If asking for aid is inviting distraction then letting things run their course is their best option. "And we, what, pretend to be each other in the meantime?"

He nods, vertebrae breaking with the movement. "We have to prevent the others from becoming aware that anything is wrong. Masquerading around as each other is going to be necessary."

Again, silence coats her room with the same slimy, bloody mucus that oozes from Nozomi's distorted body like a slug trail. She isn't sure how to even have this conversation with Aotsuki, unsure how to bridge the vast gap between them with anything other than force and frustration. Surely he doesn't have that good of an impression of her anyway, considering the trouble her group had caused when they first joined. She shouldn't make it worse.

When Aotsuki speaks again, it's so sudden and matter-of-fact that Nozomi can barely stifle the noise of surprise that squeaks out of her. "Have you ever killed yourself?"

"What?!" She can't even be bothered to hide her genuine emotions.

Aotsuki repeats himself, placing a hand over his exposed, pulsating heart. "Have you ever killed yourself? Your Artificial Class Armor functions differently from our Infusers so I assume you haven't ever tried to use a proper Infuser, but I need to gauge how difficult it will be to break past your self-preservation instincts just to fight."

Oh. He meant using an Infuser. "No, Nigou wouldn't let me try when I mentioned my hemoanima was too weak. Especially after he realized I couldn't be registered in the Revive-o-Matic. Hence the Artificial Class Armor."

"Then we should practice." The ease at which he suggests that is—

"How?" She gestures between the two of them. "Kyoshika, Kurara, and Omokage are going to want to use the Gym as soon as they wake up. It's our...morning routine." Suddenly the realization that Aotsuki will be in her body for that time period, that she will miss out on time with her friends drops the bottom out of her stomach. "If we're in the Gym when they arrive then I'm fairly certain that Kurara will have something...unkind to say to you - to me - to this body about being alone with 'Nozomi'."

The idea seems to upset Aotsuki as much as it upsets her. Maybe even more. His face twists into a bitter sneer. She's never seen herself make such an expression, nor has she seen Aotsuki look like that. It's a foreign and violent thing. "Then we had better hurry, so they don't catch us. We can hammer out the other's mannerisms on the way there."

She wants to protest. She wants to call out to him, grab at his twisted limbs and demand they stay out of the public light but something else occurs to her. "...Sumino..."

"What about Takumi?" Eito glances at her, eyebrows in his fringe.

"He has this...thing about me." It's the kindest way to speak about whatever strange problem Sumino has regarding her. He is...obsessed, in a way, but likely not with her. With whoever she reminds him of. It makes her uncomfortable and, for what it's worth, he has been keeping his distance since she expressed discomfort with his familiarity. Still— "Will you be alright if he decides to, um, try and get close?"

Again, Aotsuki smiles in a way that looks horribly foreign on Nozomi's face. Again, it makes her feel...uncomfortable. "Don't worry too much about Takumi. I can handle him." She nods. "Now let's go."

The two of them slink out of Nozomi's bedroom as quietly as they can, their footfalls—or, in Aotsuki's case, the awful slithering scraping sucking sound of him dragging himself along the rooftop—echoing loudly in the early morning air. Aotsuki leads the charge as if he isn't even aware of the trail of gore and ooze he's leaving in his wake or the blood and chunks of burnt flesh that remain on any surface he touches, too accustomed to taking the lead to accommodate for his condition to change now.

Nozomi, too used to keeping her head down and her mouth shut for the betterment of the team, says nothing of how badly it makes her want to scrub the upper layer of her skin off. After all: they have to play at being each other, don't they? It wouldn't do if she threw a childish tantrum over something as small as some discomfort.

If Aotsuki could live like this for seventeen years, she can live like this for a few measly days without complaint.

(It's nauseating and awful, the way her body sounds like someone dragging themselves by their arms, metal and bone and blood and organs trailing behind like a tail. The pulpy remains left behind are chunky reminders of pain, the smoky gasoline tinge agonizingly acrid. Nozomi fights to keep her hands away from her nose, struggles to keep her eyes somewhere near Aotsuki's borrowed head, strains to hear the words behind the bubbling choking sounds that drown out what was her voice come out of lips that look like her father's had. She swallows bile and breathes—in, out—trying to keep her composure.)

(She won't fail. She can't fail. She can't. She can't!)

(Aotsuki is depending on her.)

Aotsuki presses an Infuser in her hands. She blinks down at the clear window in the scabbard that shows off his name inscribed beneath the number four on his blade, turning it back and forth in her dazed grip. The way that the clinical choice of numbering their weapons contrasts with how pretty Aotsuki Eito looks written on the blood-red blade holds her attention as she wonders what number they would have given her, had she not been a failure. Likely the same as was stamped on her Artificial Class Armor but to see it carved into such a delicate thing as an Infuser is different, isn't it?

"Keep going." His command draws her attention and she looks at him without remembering what's going on. The expression that greets her—her own ruined face contorted like it always is in her own worst nightmares—is cold and distant. Porcelain. Fake.

Does she look like that to everyone? Cold and aloof, not the way that Kurara is but in a worse way, not dissimilar to the bullies in her school were? Fake and two-faced? Has she always smiled like her happiness was a lie balancing on razor wire?

"O-okay." She mutters, unsure if Aotsuki can hear her—or even cares—the nausea pushing against her throat less about the horror of her form now and more something like understanding. Clarity.

Outside looking in, has she ever been anything other than a pretty porcelain doll? Or has she—

The Gym is wide and dark, blissfully empty. Aotsuki turns around and looks dryly at the activator for her Artificial Class Armor in his hand, turning a cold eye to Nozomi and the Infuser gripped in her fist. "Would you like to start?"

His Infuser feels like ice in her hands now, the metal burning her borrowed too-hot skin. "With k—" the word catches, chokes her. He just smiles, patient.

It still feels fake somehow, like there's a veneer that holds the smile plastered on her face in place, plasticine and high-gloss paint bright and shiny to distract from— "I could learn how to use your Artificial Class Armor first so that I can heal you if you mess up but...if you have my body and my hemoanima, it likely won't be an issue."

"Howso?"

He sighs, phlegm and blood and chunks of some unidentifiable gore falling impotently from his lips and splattering against the Gym's wooden flooring, disappointment barely concealed. "My Specialist Skill."

What was his Specialist Skill again? Special...something to do with fortune?

"Special Fortunetelling, while it gives me an edge in combat, has a wider application in everyday life. Namely: I am extremely lucky." The patient way he spells it out for her, the words bludgeoning her thoughts back into her head, makes her hackles rise. She feels patronized to, and yet it's necessary because she can't seem to pull herself together long enough to think critically for even a second. "You are, while inhabiting my body, far more likely to achieve your goals if they rely on some modicum of chance." Like stabbing a blade into your heart and not dying of hemorrhagic shock, he doesn't say, but she can read between the lines. She's not stupid. "I can't fault you for wanting some kind of assurance you won't bleed out, however, even if you would be put back together by the Revive-o-Matic without much fuss."

Right...because Aotsuki's body has enough hemoanima to use the Revive-o-Matic. She isn't as mortal as she was before.

The fear of death stills her hand regardless. Her eyes stay fixed on the horrid, gaping wound in his torso, the way his intestines spill out and all over the floor, puddles of incardanine fluid sending spidery tendrils out to grasp at her feet with lonely hands intent on pullling her deep into the grave to join her parents. She's supposed to shove a blade into her heart? She's supposed to touch the very thing keeping her alive with the point of a weapon and that will allow her to fight?

Her breathing must have picked up in an audible way because Aotsuki turns over her activator in his malformed hands and scrutinizes it in detail, looking for how to operate it. When he speaks, his choked voice is pleasant but distant, cold and clinical—the way his room had been. "You're allowed to be afraid," he says, though it almost sounds like he's dismissing her instead of comforting her, "but after all the fights you've been in—without the access to the Revive-o-Matic at that—you're balking now?" Coward.

"I—"

"The human brain does have a powerful survival instinct," he notes. He affixes the activator to his chest and gently presses the center button, the Artificial Class Armor manifesting as it always did for her. Through her borrowed eyes, it almost appears as though the mass of his body is wrapped in a shell like a rigid body bag, the armor acting to hold in some of the spilling mess and pushing other things out of alignment. An explosion of blood and fat and intestinal fluids coats the Gym floor and Nozomi loses the fight against her nausea, doubling over with the overwhelming scent and sight of her body being compressed like a malformed sausage. Unbothered—or perhaps unwilling to let the conversation drift from his original point—Aotsuki continues on unperturbed. "But it isn't as hard as you think it is. You just find the gap between the ribs, a little left of your sternum." He presses a hand against the hard plating holding his body together, many-jointed fingers splaying like crushed insects. "Right. About. Here."

She knows where the heart is. She can feel it beating, screaming, pulsing as it pushes cryptoglobin rich blood through her borrowed body, screaming through her ears and causing her extremities to tingle. Still...her hand doesn't move. Still...she can't—

The noise Aotsuki lets out is a bit like unsealing a container of yogurt, sticky and chunky but wet. Disapproving. He closes the distance between them and wraps a slimy hand around hers. She tries to jerk away but his grip is stronger than she expected and she can't escape. "It only hurts for a moment. And it's only really scary the first time." His words are meant to be soothing but—

(The shadow of her mother in their apartment. Her legs not touching the floor. The sight of an asphyxiated corpse nothing compared to the horrid stench of a body relaxing every sphincter at once and painting what was a happy home in every fluid contained within the now empty shell.)

(Folded over her, metal shoved into his heart, her father looks at her with sightless eyes and smiles. His last thought, his last wish had been to save her. A blade of rubble impaling him, carving a gash up her stomach. Through his heart. His heart. His heart.)

It feels like a shot. Then it feels like a flood. She's bleeding—she knows she's bleeding, that's what happens when you puncture the heart—but it doesn't feel like it should. It feels like a relief, like her body is letting off pressure, and the blood doesn't pool so much as it curls around her in a protective embrace. Like a hug, warm and comforting. Within the cocoon, it paints her skin with hardened cryptoglobin, the black and white of the standard Class Armor curling over her body in place of the thin nightclothes she had been wearing before, the Infuser blade itself sinking into her heart and bursting into bright white fire that scorches the pectoral muscles to carbonized spires that form part of the unified look of the Special Defense Unit. Then, as it unfurls and gently sets her down on the Gym floor again, the remainder of the blood solidifies into Aotsuki's horse-headed scythe, the spines hungrily nipping at her gloved hands. The grey inactive blade curves wickedly, the crimson eyes of the skull that the blade protrudes from glinting as it watches the two of them stand in the aftermath.

Aotsuki blithely smiles at Nozomi, whose panic meets the shore of adrenaline, crashing and cutting her senses to dull sand and messy nonsense.

Now that it's over and done with, blood no longer spewing from her punctured heart, the tide recedes somewhat and she can breathe. In. Out.

It hadn't been so bad.

In. Out.

Like Aotsuki had said: it only hurt for a moment.

In. Out.

She can do this.

"There." She leans on Aotsuki's scythe as he nods his head in appreciation. "Now dispel it and do it again. On your own."

She frowns at him. "Dispel it?"

Aotsuki reaches up and taps the centerpiece of Nozomi's Artificial Class Armor, disabling it. His mass spills out, slopping across the floor like an upended food tray. Nozomi's nose wrinkles at the smell, she flinches at the sound, but she holds her ground. "Undo the transformation." Then he reactivates the Artificial Class Armor, squeezing the majority of his car wreck corpse of a body back into the metal and cloth shape of a person, oozing violently out the bottom like a burst burrito. "And redo it."

"How?" Maybe she shouldn't be so sharp about this but he is being very obtuse and she is not happy about how vague he's being. "How do I—?"

"Like killing yourself in reverse." The way he smiles—all teeth and no eyes—makes her shiver slightly. Still, his tone is pleasant, even if what he's saying is incredibly pointed. "Let go of your death."

"Mindfulness?" He laughs, a horrid snorting choking coughing sound, glass and chunks of lung and blood splattering past cracked lips. "How?!"

"How did it feel to die? To activate your - my hemoanima?" Deactivate. Reactivate. He almost fiddles with the mechanism of Nozomi's Artificial Class Armor, squelching horribly as he talks. "Think about that."

Helpful.

But...

A blade. A point. Heat. A rush.

All of that in reverse.

Think about her death, only backwards.

When she opens her eyes she feels winded. Drained. Aotsuki is watching her with eyes that feel sharper than they should, an uncomfortably dull razor across her skin, pulling hair out more than cutting it close. His smile is painted on, his head tilted in perfect imitation of her own neutral stance but it feels...off. Wrong. Maybe it's something about seeing someone else using her face, her voice, her body in this way, but she just wants to—

His scythe is in her hand before she realizes it, blade drinking in weeping blood as she points his - her weapon at her - at him. She trembles with an emotion she can't seem to understand as her instincts scream that whatever is in her body is wrong.

Unperturbed, his eyes watch her; trace the blade to the grinning skull, the hilt to her shaking hands, her arms to her panicked face. What expression is she making? Why is he smiling wider?

"There." He presses a finger to the activator and disables her Artificial Class Armor. "You did it all by yourself. Hardly painful, was it? You barely even noticed it had happened."

That was true. She hadn't even realized she'd transformed until she had leveled his scythe at him, the hooked blade wrapping around the back of her neck like the arm of an old friend. Like a promise.

"I-I'm so sorry!" In her panic, she drops the weapon and transformation both. Blood drips from her pierced palms as she steps away from Aotsuki, unsure of how to fix this or make it better. "I just—"

"Did what was asked of you," he finishes for her. He almost seems amused that she's so bothered. Does he not understand—?

"But—"

"Nozomi," cold ice cuts through the watery wheezing of his borrowed voice, the sudden feeling of a scythe pressed into the curve of her neck. She stops speaking, a strange fear gripping at her too-loud heart, crushing her too-fast pulse into a whine that screams in her ears. "It's okay."

She doesn't respond. She can't respond. Is it kindness that sees him deferring her concerns? Or something else entirely?

Behind them, the Gym door opens. Unthinking, Nozomi turns to see who it could be at this hour.

She had forgotten.

—

Eito watches as Nozomi turns tail and flees with his body, curled in on herself like a terrified child, barely holding it together. How pathetic she must look to the others, ashen, sweat-soaked, and slobbering from the aftereffects of emptying her stomach all over the pristine Gym floor. He suppresses a sneer, keeps his mouth pulled in a picture perfect imitation of concern and worry, eyes lingering carefully on the puddle of vomit on the ground.

He can't look up at the three people sharing his space. He isn't sure he can handle that in his current condition.

Watching Nozomi struggle with something as simple as using an Infuser had been an interesting diversion to distract him from the skin crawling horror of inhabiting her body. The mere thought of his mind and soul being packed into a vile human's shell against his will, his righteous eyes stolen from him and given to the wretch wearing his body like an ill-fitting suit, makes him almost blind with fury. And so, while they did need to become accustomed to how the other's body prepares for combat, perhaps he had less...polite intentions behind how forcefully he demanded she force the transformation.

(The speed at which she became accustomed to the act surprised him—despite only activating her Class Armor on her own once—though he had been amused when she pressed his own weapon against his borrowed throat, eyes wide in instinctual horror. Had she seen something in his face that terrified her, that told her he was a threat that needed to die? It was...gratifying in a way, to know that someone else in his position would fight against his natural urges just as much as he did.)

And so, in his attempt to perhaps draw blood in his education of how to use an Infuser, he forgot that the two of them were disheveled and in a public place. Hence the situation he's dealing with now.

What did Nozomi's friends look like to her? Filtered through his righteous eyes and her own perception of who they are, what new fresh hell was she subjected to before she fled? After all, she already confirmed that her perception of the body he's in is vastly different from his own had been.

Perhaps it's because she knows her own face—knows what she looks like without the lies of humanity stripped away—that she sees herself relatively undistorted. And, in that same vein, perhaps she sees her friends more human than he ever did. Either way, their very presence tipped her over the edge and she fled.

Coward.

"What the hell were you two doing?" Kurara's shrill voice pierces through the slowly growing headache Eito is fighting off, a lance of noise and irritation. "That whitewashed pervert took off like we caught him with his dick in his hands." Classy.

"If we had caught him with his...dick in his hands," Kyoshika chokes on the word, "surely Nozomi-dono would have blown it off with her Class Weapon. They are practicing here, or were before we arrived, and she looks far more composed than Eito-dono did, therein nothing untoward must have occurred!"

"Stuff your sword in it," Kurara snaps. "He's in his nightclothes, she's in her nightclothes, they both look like they've been rolling around on the floor. Class Armor or not, she's missing her weapon. What else could have happened?"

Perhaps Eito should step in and correct her vulgar misunderstanding but he doesn't trust himself to properly play his part without practice—and certainly not around the three people who know her better than anyone else at this academy.

"Judging by how hard he threw up, it must have been a killer time." Yugamu's amusement is what pushes him over the edge, the lascivious way he implies some foul deed coated in paraphilia and fetish makes his borrowed skin crawl and the hair on the back of his borrowed neck stand on end. Rising nausea threatens his - her dinner joining Eito's watery bile on the Gym floor.

"It wasn't like that!" Nozomi doesn't speak sharply, she's kind and soft and a pushover. That doesn't mean she doesn't have an edge—speaking with her the way he has, Eito is certain she's as fake as he is in places—but in situations like this, she would be more placating and mildly distressed than genuinely furious. "Aotsuki and I were practicing drills!"

Kurara snorts derisively. "Yeah, I'll bet." And then, as a vicious aside. "I'm going to shoot his dick clean off."

"Now, now, let's not be so hasty." Eito wouldn't have pegged Yugamu for the peacekeeper but he quickly reigns in Kurara before she can get too wound up. "If Nozomi says that they were running drills, we can trust her, can't we?"

Even though he's not looking at them, he can feel his gaze burn holes in his skin. It feels awful and vile, like being touched by a hot poker. He wants to go back to Nozomi's room and shower until his skin is raw and clean, boiled and disinfected.

Kyoshika makes some strange noise of agreement, a soft harrumph, but Kurara remains obstinately silent. When she speaks again, her voice strikes a vulnerable bit of Eito's brain that lances pain up his spine. "If he really didn't do anything, why won't you look at us?"

"Perhaps Nozomi-dono is still dizzy from running drills with Eito-dono!"

"I wasn't asking you!" Eito can feel her turn her attention back to him, can imagine her rotted head dripping with a scowl, flies buzzing around it in droves. Maggots must spill from the decaying mass of fruit that makes up her so-called head, hollow sockets squinted in irritation. "If it was really nothing, if you don't want me to go track down Aotsuki and punch him right to the end of this fucking war, then look me in the eyes and tell me it was just a drill."

How cute. She cares enough about 'Nozomi' to threaten 'Eito' with bodily harm.

He swallows heavily and looks up, puts on a smile he hopes is convincing enough. "It really is fine," he lies, "we were only running practice drills to increase our response time."

He stops and stares. Tries not to throw up. Almost fails.

Human memory is a fickle thing. It will sometimes hold on to images for long after they've ever been a presence in your life. And, in the same vein, it will sometimes quickly purge the original sight of something and replace it with its current appearance. As Eito looks out at the reserve squad, he finds it difficult to remember how he had perceived them the day before through his righteous eyes, their current appearances burning into his short and long term memory like a flash bulb snapped against his retinas.

Kurara, front and center in his vision, is strangely plain looking. Tomato mask aside—and maybe that helps make her more palatable to behold than if she hadn't been wearing something that covered her entire face—she's a slight, well-toned girl in an all-black uniform and platform boots. The expression on her tomato mask—likely the basis for his own initial understanding of her, a decaying mess of mold and slop that must have been drawn from the association borne between her mask and her personality and existence as a human being—shifting in strangely minute ways that shouldn't be possible and yet...

Beside her, looming like some kind of perverse prey animal, Yugamu smiles with his mouth, his one visible eye cutting to the meat of Eito in a way that makes him feel small and vulnerable. He's pretty in an androgynous way, lithe and delicate in ways Eito isn't, but there's something about his posture and the way he holds himself that brings to mind images of predatory insects or venomous serpents, offsetting the sudden recognition of the self that Eito is hit with.

It's Kyoshika that is the hardest to look at, not because she is objectionable or ugly—more ugly than humans usually look, filthy, vile beings that they are—but because she just...is. A muscular young woman with strong features and guileless grey eyes that watch him without malice or suspicion. Her smile curls the edges of her mouth, her gloved hands tucked against her sides, arms folded in a display of patience. Her long hair frames her face, lashes curving gently in a way that makes her seem almost angelic.

Eito has to swallow a hysterical, gasping laugh.

For most of his life, his is the only face he's ever seen. As such, he has grown accustomed to reading the facial expressions of beasts and monsters, parsing context through body language and muffled and garbled tone of voice. He practiced expressions in the mirror, taught himself to pretend, and held conversations with himself in the bathroom so that he could convincingly play the part.

Seeing a smile on a real human face that wasn't his own is—

Kurara's expression twists, pinches, and she sighs. "Fine." Behind her, Kyoshika lights up and her guileless smile widens in delight. "I won't punch his lights out. You're welcome..."

Eito wants to say thank you, to acknowledge what has been said and move the conversation to something else but his words stick in his throat. He worries—no, not worries, is certain—that if he opens his mouth, he'll vomit as well. It wouldn't be a good look and that's why he remains silent.

Nothing else.

"You sure made a mess of the place though." Yugamu notes, craning his neck at an inhuman angle to peer at the blood and bile on the floor. "Are you sure it wasn't something more fun than drills? This looks like far too much fluid for just a few uses of an Infuser." The way his mouth curls, the implication singing in his voice, is infuriating. It's nauseating.

I'm certain, he wants to reply. He doesn't trust himself to speak without his voice cracking and breaking. He holds still like a statue, silent as a grave, praying they'll assume he isn't feeling well. Hoping they'll draw their own incorrect conclusions.

"Should we perhaps postpone our run until after the Gym has been disinfected?" Kyoshika asks the others. Stripped of any affect his disorder applies to it, her voice is strong and clear like the shounen manga heroes she so clearly admires. And, in the same vein, her question is without malice, a sincerity there that is inhuman.

Eito can feel the smile he's wearing thin and fray.

"Do you want to get on your knees and scrub Aotsuki's pervert puke out of the cracks in the floor?" Kurara scoffs. "That's poor people work. I wouldn't be caught dead doing it."

"That can be arranged," Yugamu purrs. Kurara hisses and punches him in the shoulder. It dislocates with a sickening popping noise but Yugamu quickly sets it without so much as flinching. "It was only a suggestion."

"I would rather pay Maruko to lick it up than spend another second smelling whatever it is Aotsuki had for dinner."

"Actually, it's mostly stomach acid at this point. He must have already thrown up once before."

"Poor Eito-dono..."

"I'm sorry—" The words spew out unbidden, the panic painting them more real than he'd like to admit. "I - I'm not feeling well. I know we were going to—"

"Don't feed me those excuses," Kurara sniffs, waving a hand at Eito. "Go lay down and rest before you get me sick too. I don't want to catch your plebian cold or step in your puke or whatever."

Kyoshika's eyes practically sparkle as she looks at Kurara. "As Kurara-dono said: rest up! And, should you still be feeling unwell come lunch, I'll bring you a simple meal and feed you so that you can recover your strength." Red coats her cheeks as she mutters the last bit, twiddling her fingers in a way Eito can only assume is shyly. It's hard to tell through the tinny noise in his ears and the way his vision is wobbling.

Yugamu, on the other hand, never once turns his gaze away from Eito, silently smiling pleasantly at him. "Sleep well, Nozomi."

"Thanks...and sorry."

"Don't apologize," Yugamu's grin widens. "Just feel better."

He flees the Gym in much the same manner as Nozomi had. Perhaps with a bit more grace and dignity, not outright running away with tears in his eyes and a hand covering his nose and mouth, but certainly no less shamefully.

He just...couldn't be in a room with them for a moment longer. It was unbearable.

As he climbs the stairs back to the roof, Eito tries to remember what they really look like, stripped of their false likeness by his righteous eyes. He tries to cut away at the facade of unnatural beauty that Nozomi's perception of the others has shown him to reveal the ugliness lying within. He tries all this in vain.

All he can see when he thinks about Yugamu is the way that his delicate lips had curled into a smile that Eito can only call caring. All he can remember when he tries to recall Kurara is the worry her mask projected as she tried her best to pretend like she wasn't asking after his health. All he can think of when he imagines Kyoshika is the earnest way she closed the distance between them, eyes wide with concern.

They're monsters. Humans. They shouldn't look like he does. They shouldn't look like how everyone else sees them. He was the one person who could truly see everyone for what they really are and now—

The way Nozomi had paled—the color leaving her borrowed face moments before the contents left her stomach for what had to be the second, if not third or fourth time—upon seeing her friends. The way she refused to look up from the floor as she fled, white-knuckling her Infuser. The way everyone had stared after her, confusion palpable, then turned their myriad gazes back onto Eito.

She could see the truth and it disgusted her. He could only see the lie and it disgusted him.

Waiting out whatever it is that has happened to them is slowly becoming something of a horror show. An ordeal he is unsure he can actually tolerate to its conclusion if everyone in the Special Defense Unit looks the same as those three did.

After all: he hasn't even looked in the mirror.

Maybe it's hypocritical of him but no one can blame him for wanting to delay any kind of revelation regarding what kind of horrid human guise he's wearing. If he sees what Nozomi looks like to herself and to every other wretched human in the world, then he has to contend with his own understanding of the body he's found himself in—weak hemoanima aside.

It's not as though being trapped in a human body is going to deter his plans. Granted, it means that disposing of the others becomes more...difficult, as Nozomi can't actually process hemoanima the same as everyone else, and ingesting another human's hemoanima might send her into some kind of hemoanima-based arrest or perhaps it would even burn her alive from the inside out—her mention of how warm Eito's body felt compared to her own and the way he's constantly startled by how passively warm things are in comparison to Nozomi's body's temperature a clue that hemoanima did actually impact internal temperature. Still, he has other avenues of disposal and disappearance. The Wall of Fire, for instance. And Nozomi has access to the reserve corps in a way that Eito didn't.

Additionally, Nozomi is passive enough and people-pleasing enough to weasel her way into all the various floating social cliques that have formed in the Last Defense Academy. This affords him some new measures of freedom that being himself didn't.

A fair trade for a lack of power and the conditional immortality that the Revive-o-Matic affords those with sufficient hemoanima.

He can work with this. He doesn't have to let it push back his plans. He just has to adjust his strategy on the fly. He—

"Kirifuji?"

Eito stops dead in his tracks, dread sinking a stone in his gut. While unfamiliar in some ways, he's fairly sure he knows who's talking to him. The one person they had both tried their hardest to avoid.

What a karmic joke.

"Yes, Sumino?" He doesn't turn to look. He can't look. It's almost like a horror movie, like the type of thing where acknowledging the existence of something makes it real. If he sees Takumi then—

"Is everything okay?" He sounds concerned. Without the filter of his own cognition, Takumi's voice is oddly normal. It's almost familiar, enough like his own that a sudden flush of terror rips through him. "I saw Aotsuki running back to the roof looking like he was sick or something and you — I know you have your thing with your group and all but you also look bad? I just want to make sure neither of you are sick." He laughs, this awkward thing that makes Eito's heart race. "We can't afford to lose both of you, just in case there's a defensive battle or whatever, but also...you're—" Don't say it.

"Aotsuki and I were practicing transforming for defensive battles and just overdid it a little." The lie comes easily. A good lie has the basis of truth in it as a foundation and, like a good foundation, it runs deep. If his lie isn't consistent across the board, someone will get suspicious. "Thank you for worrying, though. I'm just going back to my room to rest after I take a quick shower."

"O-oh..." He can imagine, revulsion crawling insectile over his skin, the way Takumi is blushing as he unconsciously imagines Nozomi in the shower. Disgusting. "But—"

"Really," he can't afford to tarry. He needs to get back to his - Nozomi's room so he can collect himself and ready himself for the fight to come. "Thank you for your concern but I should—"

Takumi grabs him by the wrist to prevent him from leaving. Without thinking, Eito turns to look at him, eyes wide in panic. He sees Takumi for the first time without the protection of his eyes.

He's blinding.

By all accounts, Takumi is a normal young man. There's nothing special about him. He's as plain as Kyoshika is. But there is an intensity to his stare that gives him some otherworldly presence. His red hair frames his face in a halo of fire, blue eyes bright and without suspicion, crimson lashes making the overall effect akin to the way illuminated manuscripts painted angels. Gone is the burnt, twiggy, shambling corpse that Eito knew him to be. In its place is a funhouse mirror reflection of Eito himself; a boy who is by all accounts completely unremarkable but in that everyman way and, as such, becomes something ethereally beautiful in return.

Eito wrenches his arm free of Takumi's clutch, unsure of the expression he's making. Surely it's one of panic and horror. Judging by how horrified Takumi looks in return, it must be something to behold because he looks like Eito slapped him. Good.

Without another word, he runs the remaining distance between where he was and Nozomi's room, locking the door behind him. He breathes (in, out) and tries to collect himself.