melodiesoflife | Road trip! [closed]

Road trip! [closed]

Who: Manami and K'pandolu
What: Sparring, monster-killing, and monster not-killing. [Friendly monster quest]
When: End of June (whenever the trip to Stilzkin's Castle is done)
Where: Island of Aqures Tosf
Warning: None

June was full of people doing fun things! The blitzball was something else! And some people had gone exploring some castle, so Manami was left without many people he knew around again.

So when he saw Kupandoru-san walking around, he remembered that they were going to go sparring again!
And Tia had told him that Aqures Tosf had monsters at his level! (There was something about berries and molobo? But he forgets.)
So, road trip, right! Right!

A: Conversation. Because there's lots of time for that when you're on a boat. srs business.

B: HAMSTER ATTACK! ...Not.

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There has been a lot of boat travel in K'pandolu's life recently, and while it's less noticeable (…she assumes), she's- well- starting to get tired of it. So of course conversation with the other Hero on board is the obvious step! Besides, what's been going through that head of his?

She settles next to him, ears perked. "Are you enjoying the journey so far?"

He turns from staring blankly out at the water and gives her a thin, unusually tired smile.

"It's so flat. It's sooo flat and boring!" And the motion makes him feel vaguely unwell. Not enough to complain about, not enough to stop him from eating well enough at meals, but still...

"How much longer again?" However long it is, it's too long.

"The travelling's better when it's flat, at least." That would probably have made any motion sickness worse.

She's not the best at guessing travel times, but she squints at the horizon all the same, as though that'll make it come a little faster. "A few hours, perhaps," she hazards.

Yep, too long! Too long~ too long~
Too bad he didn't know anything about boats, or he could tell the captain how to use the good breezes.

"Travelling is always better when there's slopes- oh. You didn't mean it like that, did you? Heh. Yah, I suppose a mountain of wave would be a problem!"

That certainly could have come in handy. Alas!

She twitched one ear, as she realised her misunderstanding. "It would indeed," she agreed seriously. "I don't imagine it'd be easy to make your way up one, either."

Hee~ Her ear twitched. That never gets old. (And it was his misunderstanding, not yours, K'pandolu! Don't let this kid get you confused!)

"Mmm?" Manami thought about it for a moment. Then he moved his arms and hands as a useful visual aid. A huge wave... a small boat trying to go up the wave...

"I dunno! It could be exciting!" (In a we're-all-gonna-die kind of way?)

(Well… she'll try!)

She watched his hands, head tilted as she tried to make sense of the movements. Trying all the same, was it?

"Being so close to death?" she mused, leaning back for a moment. "I suppose it could be. But I've no wish to find out."

"But that's when you feel most alive-!" Manami smiles, but after just a moment his smile looks somehow just a bit graver.

"The feeling of being close to death... Close is enough. I'm not afraid of that, exactly, but I don't want to find out yet, either." And with that the smile falls from his face and he looks out over the waves.

Kupandoru-san is older than he is, and an actual warrior too. She will probably do something in that battle that's coming.
Manami ... won't.

Absently he takes his crystal out of his breast pocket. Long and thin, it reminds him of a feather. He runs a finger down the edge of it, thinking and trying to not think.

"Kupandoru-san..." Fukutomi-san, the shared dream, the discussion afterwards...
"Did you hear it? That the Heroes carry part of the Calamity with them? That they are summoned, sacrificed, and summoned again?" He doesn't want to think about it, but he can't stop being faced with it- he rambles on.

"The Heroes when they die, the planet keeps them- the ... ones who look like- who nearly are the people we know." He shakes his head. "I don't want to be trapped by this planet like that. I can't think of anything good about that. Even if the soul is in two places at once." Zelda-san had tried to explain it to him, but it still felt too 'off' to him. The finger running along the edge of the crystal pauses.

"Can we do anything that hasn't been done before? Can we sacrifice ourselves in a way that changes what happens from now on?" He grips the crystal, his posture tense as if he's about to smash it to the deck in an effort to break it. But it's only for the blink of an eye- he is back to being draped over the railing so languidly you might have thought it your imagination but for the way his eyes are tight as he looks at the crystal in his fist.

He then laughs, but it's a hollow sound given what he's trying to laugh off.

"Juuust kidding, just kidding, never mind, right?"

She snorted, but his next words left her concerned, and she watched him, arms folded, ears turned forward.

"I heard," she said, softly. What the Heroes were, why those of the previous cycle had remained… those thoughts fed her fears, brought back every time she looked at her own crystal. She didn't take it out much, these days. And someone like Manami… they didn't suit him. Not at all. The only salvation she saw was that perhaps, somehow, those doubles were not truly the people they knew… but that thought she kept to herself, unwilling to break whatever might be broken by speaking of it.

She started when he tensed, arms unfolding to prevent disaster if need be- and then he laughed, and she stopped. It wasn't a happy sound, and she watched his face, tail curling. He could try to laugh it off, but- something like this- if he held onto it, until it sank deep into his heart…

"No," she said, shaking her head, and stepped towards him. Close enough to reach out and poke his cheeks a few times. "Manami, listen. Sacrificing ourselves- that's what happened before. That's not where the answer lies. As long as we're alive… we can do something."

"Ku-pando-ru-san?" Manami spoke in-between pokes in surprise. But she had his attention.

"Do something..." he repeated. 'Something' was fine, but no one really knew what they were doing, did they. The blank look in his eyes as he absently rubbed where he'd been poked probably communicated as much.

One ear flicked back almost guiltily- 'something' wasn't much to go on, after all. Still, she reached out to poke him between the eyes.

"We'll find whatever we can," she said, hands going to her hips. "You'll look for anything interesting, too, right? There may be other ancient artefacts in different kinds of the world- and if those hold some sort of clue, we should find it. Right?" That is something to do, at least!

His eyes crossed as he watched that finger, and he didn't resist the poke to his forehead.

"Mmm? I suppose you're right. That terminal that we saw in the dream- maybe there could be more things like that. Heh, not that I'd really know what to do with a clue if it came to me, but I'll at least keep my eyes open for one."

It'd be better than fighting against people, anyway.

K'pandolu nodded, hands back on her hips. "Exactly. Something's surely survived from then to now!" Whatever it is, it might take some work to get it operational again- but that would be a question of time. "If you don't know what to do with anything like that, I'm sure one of the others will work it out."

He grinned at her, a little closer to his usual self. "Ahh. You're so certain, Kupandoru-san." It must be nice to be so confident- to have a plan.

(But then, it was hard for Manami to keep plans in mind~)

She flicked one ear, a little embarrassed, but still pleased. At least that seemed to have helped a little. "I do what I can," she said, simply, smiling.

"Good luck with that, then~"

One conversation could not solve the troubles in his mind, and Manami still didn't really know what he could do to get back where he belonged. But at least he could be a little bolstered by K'pandolu's confidence, and the idea that things would be different this cycle.

K'pandolu huffed at him a little, ears flicking, standing up straight. "I'm counting on you to do you part, too!" she advised, bringing one hand up to point at him.

Heh, well here is something he's used to. She sounds like Toudou-san. And of course at the mental image of his senpai with cat ears flicking gets a true smile out of him.

"Yep, yep. Sure thing~"

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Road trip! [closed]

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