[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Snowy Day

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 1806 words

B/D: My first try at messing around with Nanako and Kae. Predictably, Nanako becomes a lunatic.

Nanako swept along the snowy streets, eyes chattering, teeth chattering, her fists balled deep within the pockets of a coat that came down to her ankles. Winter, she had decided, was absolutely not necessary. What kind of idiot had designed this planet, anyway? There was too much ocean, not enough mountains, and the countries didn’t even look like anything. The least they could do was trim the landmass so it looked like a fluffy sheep from the air or something, but no, all the people on Earth were too lazy and landbound to do even a simple thing like that.

As usual, Kae was late, for reasons Nana couldn’t even imagine. How on earth could Kae consistently arrive late when she refused to move at less than a run and shouted ‘whoosh!’ whenever she was going anywhere? Had nobody educated Kae on the true meaning of whoosh? Was she somehow whoosh deficient?

And, of course, she had picked today of all days to be late – the one time that Nanako could have actually used somebody with the body temperature of a space heater and no sense of personal space. For a moment, she fought the urge to shake her fist and hurl invectives at the clouds. How dare they conspire to blot out the sun and reduce her to a shivering wreck? If that hadn’t been bad enough, it had begun to snow. The sky was actually throwing tiny pieces of cold at her. Who did it think it was? Somebody, she seethed, ought to go up there and show the sky who was boss, and she was exactly the girl to do it.

Sadly, as tempting as it was to fly up into the sky and perforate it with lasers, there were a few problems with the plan. First, the sky was very big. Disgustingly big, in Nanako’s opinion. There was no need for anything to be that large, ever. Which meant it was more than big enough to shrug off anything Nanako could do.

Second, the sky had friends. Scary friends. Suguri’s opinion on wilful destruction of the ozone layer was very dim indeed, and getting on the wrong side of Suguri was a recipe for some lumps and/or bumps. There was also rumours that she’d adopted a blonde weirdo (not Hime, another blonde weirdo) who was very into the sky, and very homicidal when she thought it was being mistreated.

Thirdly, the sky was not actually an animate object, and could not feel pain or regret. Nanako had known bigger obstacles in the path to revenge, but that one still ranked pretty highly on the list.

Bereft of any way to meaningfully rebuke what had (over the course of perhaps thirty or forty seconds) become her arch-nemesis, she settled for shouting insults at the clouds for a minute or two instead. She learned two things in combat training: the first was how to command a small armada of dangerous robotic weaponry, and the second was how to swear fluently and creatively in a number of languages. Sadly, as a result of her dedication, proper use of either of these skills took up her entire brain power.

As a result, she didn’t notice the sound of heavy bootsteps in the snow. She didn’t notice the ragged breathing. She didn’t even notice the ‘whoosh’. She was still telling the sky exactly what she thought of its mother when Kae crashed into her at full speed. The proper reaction, of course, was to continue swearing furiously as she toppled into the snow, which she did dutifully.

“I made it, Nana! I was gonna be late but then I didn’t!” Kae bellowed into her ear. Kae was good at bellowing, and like any enthusiastic craftsman she put her skills into practice at every opportunity. She wasn’t wearing a coat, Nanako noticed, but then, it was Kae. Freedom of movement was more fun than not freezing to death, and if she got cold it gave her an excuse to work up a sweat.

“You’re still late, because we agreed to meet up a quarter of an hour ago!” Nana hissed.

Kae tilted her head. “But you always say, ‘oh, give it an extra fifteen minutes as a Kae allowance.’ It’s fifteen minutes, so I’m still on time!”

“I do not always say that! I’ve said it exactly once in the entire history of the universe!”

The argument was lost on Kae, who was very much a present tense kind of person, and who was presently completely ignoring the tension that Nanako was feeling so keenly. It always went like this. Kae was broad strokes, and she was fine detail. She could argue against Kae, but she’d always lose, because seriously arguing against somebody who isn’t at all serious is a loss in and of itself. Kae always swept her up in that endless fountain of enthusiasm, and all she could do was try to nudge them so they didn’t crash into the banks.

“Ahahaha. This is why I like you, Nana. You’re always so passionate about weird stuff,” Kae giggled, climbing to her feet. “Alright, alright, alright! Let’s go on a date!”

“This is not a date,” Nanako snarled, rising and beating the snow off her new coat. “Friends don’t date friends.”

“Suguri and Hime go on dates all the time, and they’re really good friends!”

“Yeah, well. That silverhair wouldn’t know subtext if it hit her in the face.” Especially considering that Hime wielded it with all the subtlety of a battering ram.

For some reason, Kae found the verdict on Suguri’s love life to be a source of profound amusement, and devoted the next minute of her life to giggling like a loon. Kae’s giggle was a special thing all by itself; it started as a hiccup of laughter, and moved through the stages of belly laughing, snorting and hands-over-the-mouth snorts through to a full-fledged giggle fit. It was less correct to say that she laughed than to say that laughter consumed her.

“Ahahahaa… That’s so like you, Nana. You’re always worrying about everybody else.”

“If you knew what everybody else was like, they’d worry you too,” Nanako grumbled, mollified. 

“What do you wanna do, then?”

“Oh, oh! Let’s do food!”

Without further discussion, Kae began her charge to nowhere in particular, and Nanako was forced to scuttle breathlessly after her. As she ran along in the wake of her friend, a fire of envy was lit in Nana’s heart. How was she supposed to keep up with Kae, who had been blessed with such long, muscular legs? The answer, of course, was unforthcoming, and she found herself falling further and further behind as a result, helplessly chasing her friend through a world of whirling snow. Shuttered windows flashed by in her peripheral vision as she ran, with hand-painted signs hung above them, and every so often they would pass a faux wrought iron lamppost that hid efficient, modern electrics under the veneer of a simpler time.

“Wait up, you dope! I can’t run that fast!” she called, although she was sure the words would be spirited away by the rushing air around her face. She could have shouted anything, and Kae would never have heard it. A barked order, a torrent of invectives. Even a confession of love.

It seemed like some small fragment of her voice had carried, though, since Kae slowed her stride… just enough to snake her hand back and lock her fingers around Nana’s wrist. The purple-haired girl had the foresight to gulp before Kae sped up again, quickly enough that the ground fled from her feet. With Nanako dangling behind her like a kite, Kae charged ahead, fist raised, to meet the world.

**

“I can’t believe we got lost.”

“Ahahaha. It was an adventure, Nana!”

“Argh! Quit sounding so happy about it already!”

They must, Nanako thought, have looked a sight when they walked into the pub: one of them under-dressed and over-endowed in every area except sense, and the other one built like a fire hydrant and cussing at a rate of knots. She shivered quietly, and wondered if they’d sell her some warm mulled wine. Probably not. Being short was as much of a curse as being beautiful, sometimes.

“Hey, hey, where should we go after this?” Kae asked.

“We only just got here!”

“Yeah, but this isn’t where I wanted to go.”

She had begun to relax, slouching exuberantly on the padded chair. Nanako did a quick inventory of everything around them, and how dangerous it was to have them within arm’s reach of a bored Kae. Salt, pepper, various metal cutlery. Danger rating: incomprehensible. Suggested course of action: distract with small talk until food came. It was just disaster prevention tactics. It wasn’t as if she was enjoying the frenetic pace of the day, and it wasn’t as though she was going to be flirting or anything like that. Of course not.

“Where did you want to go?” she asked, hiding her face behind a concertina of cardboard full of dishes and drinks she probably didn’t have the money for.

“I dunno! I’ll know when I see it. Did you wanna go anywhere, Nana?”

A pause, as if to take a breath before doing something stupid. “Nowhere in particular.”

“You’re so aimless, Nana!”

“You’re one to talk,” Nanako replied. It was true, though. They had this wide world in front of them, and she didn’t really know what she wanted from it. She couldn’t exactly return to space, either. In space at least there had been orders. Things to seek. She had always been taught that orders were absolute, and so they were; but they had also ended, absolutely, and left her without a real purpose. Beyond shepherding Kae, of course.

“Just pick a direction,” she said eventually. “Pick a direction, and I’ll follow.”

Kae smiled, a kid who had gotten her way. “Alright, alright! We’ll find something cool. But keep up this time, Nana. I don’t wanna have to drag you along!”

“How about you slow down instead? Quit trying to run away from me.”

By the time the waiter had deposited their food, they had settled into a pattern of amicable bickering, a pattern they kept up between spoonfuls of warming soup and bites of soft, crusty bread. It was something nostalgic, and comforting, in a new world with no place set out for them. Perhaps one day, Nana thought, they would build that place, brick by brick, piece by piece, and invite everybody to share it with them. But before that, they had to find the foundations.

This world had too much ocean, not enough mountains, and the landmasses were sadly untrimmed. But Kae would explore it, with her long legs and her boundless energy, and Nanako would be right behind her.

A/N: As always, just trying to get to know the characters a little.