[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Orbs and Baubles

Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life

Length: 2291 words

B/D: Just a silly thing that I've been trying to write for a while. It's a little sloppier than usual in quality, but I more or less just wanted to get it out of my system.

Part of the human condition, in Suguri’s experience, was that you occasionally found yourself in a strange situation with very little idea of how you came to be there. Usually, though, there was a convenient catch-all excuse that might explain how things had got that far, like alcohol or energy drinks or a posse of clowns. Her personal catch-all excuse was quickly becoming ‘Hime’.

It wasn’t that Hime was a smooth talker, although with Sora and Suguri for competition, you could be forgiven for thinking so. It was just her enthusiastic, straightforward way of doing things that made it easy to get carried along for the ride. How long ago was it that she said to just cleave off the civilian block of her ship, just like that?

Sometimes, however, it was her own fault. She just asked the wrong questions and got the wrong answers, and doomed herself to a cascade of increasingly unlikely events. Curiosity was a killer of men, and could strike at any time.

“Hime,” she said one morning (‘morning’, of course, being sometime in the late afternoon). “What does your orb do?”

Hime blinked. Hime blinked several thousand times a day at regular intervals, and in fact never really seemed to stop blinking unless her eyes were closed altogether. But sometimes, just sometimes, Hime’s blinks had weight behind them. A hidden message, if you would. If Suguri had had to send a hidden message with blinks she would have been forced to use some kind of rudimentary morse code system, but Hime could do it with a single flicker of an eyelid. It was magic. Scary, dark magic.

“What does your zipper do?” the blonde asked, in lieu of giving an actual answer. Almost as if she had yet to decide what the answer was.

“It’s a zipper. It zips,” Suguri replied. She was a talented student of tautologies, and deployed them much as other people might deploy a battleship – often to an effect just as destructive.

“But why is it so large?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? It’s easier to use.”

Hime’s immediate reaction was to grab the oversized zipper and pull, demonstrating that, yes, a zipper half as long as the average human arm was indeed pretty easy to operate. She was dismayed when, instead of pale, supple skin, she was greeted by a fuzzy expanse of green wool speckled with red knitted reindeer.

“You wear a sweater under your jacket?” she asked, aghast. It would have taken a high-school acting class, with a teacher of considerable talent, half a semester to learn to compress such a high amount of offended-ness into one expression.

“I get cold when I’m flying around. Wind chill is a thing.”

This was so annoyingly reasonable that Hime almost, but didn’t quite, forget that Suguri flew around in what basically amounted to a mini skirt and knee socks, and should by all rights have frostbite on her thighs.

“Oh, boo. You know, I was honestly expecting you to just have a sports bra under there. I was looking forward to a rare view of your belly button,” she replied airily. “Besides, we’re indoors.”

“I get it, but I’d rather you didn’t take my clothes off without permission,” Suguri deadpanned.

“I simply don’t understand what the big deal is,” Hime sniffed. “We sleep in our underwear anyway.”

“That’s different. There’s a pillow wall, so it’s still a respectable sleeping arrangement,” she replied stiffly. She was not entirely sure why a respectable sleeping arrangement was so important, since it wasn’t like they had all that much regular contact with society at large. But what she was sure of was that, once Pandora’s Box had been opened, it could never be closed again.

“Yes, which I meant to talk to you about. Why do we have the pillow wall, anyway? You just roll over it in the night, and I wake up with your leg in my mouth.”

Suguri cocked her head to the side. “Is that why I keep waking up with drool on my ankles?”

“Yes, my dear. So it really doesn’t serve any purpose. Besides, wouldn’t you sleep so much better if you could enjoy midnight hugs? We could have midnight hugs, Suguri. All it would take is the abolition of one little wall, and the freedom of the pillows forced to maintain it. It’s within our power.”

Suguri’s face flickered through three different strengths of unimpressed before returning to something approximating diplomatic neutrality. “The pillow wall is an important part of my cultural heritage. I can’t let it go that easily.”

They were at an impasse, and it was into this very dangerous social territory that Sora blithely wandered. She had apparently been attempting to tame her hair and forgotten about it, because her brush was stuck about halfway down her shaggy curls and showed no signs of going anywhere fast. Her new destination was the fridge, but she felt the conflict in the air and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Are you two fighting?” she asked. Her face, as always, was just a touch difficult to read; was she anxious, or excited?

“No, no. Mommy and daddy aren’t fighting. We’re just having a passionate debate,” Hime said, her voice soothing and honey-sweet.

“That’s good,” Sora nodded, sagely. “If you were fighting, I’d have to beat you both up. I’ve done it before.”

Hime’s eyes narrowed a touch. “Yes, well. If you beat me up, then I won’t write your name in ketchup when I make omurice any more.”

Suguri put her hands on Hime’s shoulders. “Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?” she whispered, urgently. “The ketchup name is the best part of omurice.”

The goddess turned up her nose and sniffed. “The punishment fits the crime, then.”

Sora’s gaze grew flinty and dangerous. “I can make my own omurice. I’ll put all our names on it, then eat it all by myself. Plus, I’ll tell Suguri about the time you came downstairs in the night and ate a whole jar of jam.”

“…A whole jar?” Suguri asked, her ahoge twitching.

“A whole jar. By itself. No bread. Just with a spoon.”

“That’s quite enough, Sora! It was a moment of weakness. I just needed something a little sweet, is all. I wouldn’t have needed to eat so much jam if I had access to something else that was sweet. Such as, perhaps, a midnight hug.”

Suguri frowned. Eating a whole jar of jam was not, in her opinion, a midnight snack or a moment of weakness. It was a cry for help. She felt her resolve wavering. Would it really be so bad to lose the pillow wall? It would be nice to not start every morning by painstakingly rebuilding it. Perhaps she could get Hime to make some concessions for it, too. It bore greater consideration at a later date.

“What were you...debating?” Sora asked, when she thought that Hime’s remark had stayed in the air long enough.

“Suguri was asking me what my orb did.”

Sora tilted her head. “What does it do?”

“What does your orb do?” Hime asked, a little defensively.

“It’s a shield modulator. I can mess around with it to alter my shield’s size and strength.”

Hime clapped her hands, intrigued. “Ooh. That seems quite practical. May we have a demonstration?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Sora replied, and set about the task of making a sandwich, apparently quite content to leave the matter there. Explaining herself was not really her forte. Her forte was shooting things, fashioning sandwiches out of whatever leftovers were in the fridge, and making Nath blush. As she didn’t have Nath or her gun in her pockets, she applied herself to the one remaining possibility.

“Wait, wait, wait. Why can’t you demonstrate your shield modulator?”

Sora put a soft, pillowy loaf of bread on the table, and glared at it intently, as if testing it for some unseen quality. “It has a pre-set. The pre-set makes the shield expand. When the shield expands, it pushes things outwards really hard. I’d break the kitchen.”

“You… you mean the furniture?” Suguri asked.

“The kitchen.”

Hime let that sink in for a moment, and considered the possibilities. On one hand, now that she knew Sora’s neck ornament was highly dangerous, it was incredibly tempting to just give it a tiny boop and see what happened. On the other hand, she would almost certainly lose brownie points with Suguri for destroying select bits of her house. On the whole, she thought it better to abstain from boopage and the consequences thereof, although it was a very close thing.

“So. Your orb?” Sora asked, taking a seat.

“It’s… for hypnosis! I can use it to hypnotise people,” Hime declared, after only a second of frantic invention. “Oh, yes. I’ve always been able to do it. I just don’t use it, ever. For any reason.”

Suguri smiled to herself. Hypnosis. Really? She knew that she was often a little generous with the benefit of the doubt when Hime was concerned, but even she couldn’t take the claim seriously. It had to be a joke.

“That’s amazing,” Sora said, and there was genuine admiration in her green eyes. “Show me.”

“I just don’t use it. Ever. For any reason,” Hime repeated.

“I’ll give you my bread.”

“That’s my bread, actually,” Suguri reminded her. Sora hugged the bread closer to her chest; if she had been a cat, she would no doubt have hissed.

“I don’t care how many loaves of delicious Suguri bread you offer me, my answer remains the same. Hypnosis is too great a power to be unleashed willy-nilly, you know.”

“Three scoops of ice cream,” Suguri offered.

“Make it seven, and perhaps we shall talk,” Hime replied, and the bidding war began in earnest.

“Three scoops and two handfuls of sprinkles.”

“Six scoops and strawberry syrup.”

“Four scoops, no bonus.”

“Six, and I refuse to go lower than that.”

“Five scoops but only one of them can be strawberry.”

“Oh, mean! Strawberry is the best!”

“Rocky road is better,” Sora chimed in.

“Oh, Sora, dear, come over here so I can give you this medal for being the most wrong out of all the people on the planet,” Hime replied sweetly.

“Sure. I’ll present it to you properly.”

“Honestly, I prefer mint chocolate chip,” Suguri said.

Hime clapped her hand over her mouth. “Such heresy!”

“She’s a heretic,” Sora nodded.

“Five scoops and only one strawberry, but you have to spoon-feed me the entire first scoop.”

“Five scoops of any flavour and a warning not to push your luck,” Suguri said, dryly.

“Oh, very well then. Five scoops with sprinkles it is,” Hime said, tutting. “Now, prepare yourselves to be hypnotised.”

Preparing to be hypnotised was a difficult task, because nobody quite knew what it involved. Suguri contended that they had to enter a deep, meditative state, so that their minds could fall slack and open themselves to Hime’s power’s of suggestion. In Sora’s opinion, it was probably something to do with star charts and the healing qualities of crystals, because those always seemed to pop up sooner or later. Hime herself decided to shed as little light as possible on the whole process. In the end, the sum total of their hypnosis preparation was to make sure everybody was sitting down.

“Ahem! Now, listen to the sound of my voice,” Hime began.

“Well, we can’t listen to the taste of your voice,” Suguri said wryly.

“Don’t backchat me when I’m hynotising you, please. Now then, turn your attention to my crystal. Do you see how shiny its lustre is? The light refracting in its depths? How very pink it is?”

Hime was warming to her performance now. She had lowered her voice to something mysterious and butter-smooth, and was making vague, flowing gestures with her hands. It seemed like an important thing to do. Half of hypnotising people was convincing them that they were being hypnotised, probably.

“Your minds are receding… your selves are receding. You are becoming receptive, able to do things you would never have thought yourself capable of. Count your breaths… you are falling, descending. When I click my fingers, you will be asleep. One… two… three!”

Hime clicked her fingers sharply, and Suguri, very awake and very amused, allowed herself a low chuckle. For something that had never been more than a half-baked joke, Hime had taken it so seriously. It was – and Suguri did not use the term lightly – adorable.

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at, Suguri. For one, you owe me five scoops of ice cream. And for two, I got Sora.”

Sure enough, Sora was snoring soundly, slumped over the table and using her loaf of bread as a pillow. Suguri reached over and ruffled her hair. She dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I don’t think that’s hypnosis. I think it’s just… her being herself.”

“You’re just trying to deny my powers. Besides, you sleep like a log too,” Hime whispered back.

“We can’t leave her like this. She’ll get crumbs in her hair, and she’ll squash the bread. Could you go upstairs and get her a pillow?”

Hime gave her a lingering gaze, that was a question and a thank you all rolled into one. “You do know where I’m going to take the pillow from, correct?”

“From the pillow wall. It’s for a good cause. We can discuss the rest of them later.”

That, when all was said and done, was how Suguri found herself trying to pull a loaf of bread out from underneath her friend’s face and replace it with a pillow before her cheek hit the table. And, to her great credit, she very nearly managed it.

A/N: Yep, it's literally just random bickering about mundane but weird things. So sue me.