[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Poppomikki Sunshine, part 1

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 3197 words

B.D: Finally getting the ball rolling on this particular plot thread! This one was really exhausting to write (I've been in somewhat of a creative funk) so I'm splitting it into two parts, the second of which I'll do when I feel more refreshed.

There was simply no way around it: Sora had run out of clothes.

To Hime’s surprise and Suguri’s mild envy, it seemed that Sora had not quite been done with the whole business of growing when she was sent off to war and knocked into a ten thousand year coma. Whatever had kept her fed for those ten thousand years – Suguri had found the burnt out remains of a life-support capsule nearby, although it seemed to have suffered the brunt of Sora’s anger when she awoke to a steel-grey sky – it had been giving her just enough nutrients to live and no more than that. When she first came to them, Hime was fond of remarking, you could have flossed your teeth with her; and yet, as both Suguri and herself were waifish in construction themselves, they had just assumed it was her natural weight and thought nothing more of it.

As it turned out, they were wrong. Quite wrong. In fact, the capsule had not even maintained her optimum battle weight, which was set quite a bit below what they would consider an optimum living weight. Now, powered by frequent napping, light exercise, and as much bacon and eggs as Hime was willing to cook, the ex-soldier had picked up right where she left off in the growth department – and it seemed that all three of them had been caught off-guard by it.

“The zip broke,” she said as she presented Hime with her last jacket. It was the latest in a long line of casualties – leggings that were inches too short and littered with holes, shoes that pinched at the sides, tops that were accustomed to a slightly less voluminous bust. She was down to the bare essentials, and even those were threatening to give out. Hime was at her wits’ end – she kept fixing things, only to have them break again a day later. She was getting rather better with a needle and thread than she had ever hoped to be.

“We must go out and get her some more clothes tomorrow,” Hime said that evening. “She can’t sit around the house in her underwear all day.”

Suguri, who had happily sat around the house in her underwear when she was a ‘bachelor’, and who was almost certain that Hime would cheerfully do the same if she could get away with it, was a little less concerned but still conceded the point. She had enough trouble convincing one blonde girl to keep her clothes on, and she didn’t need another to contend with.

“For now,” she said, hesitating only the tiniest bit, “let’s go and see if I have any spare clothes that will fit her.”

Hime’s face lit up. Suguri’s closet was a mysterious and dangerous place; no living human had ever managed to get past the curtain of identical windbreakers to where the true treasures of her world-saving wardrobe lay. Given Suguri’s… eclectic tendencies with furniture and cutlery, there were bound to be some well-worn oddments and relics of times gone past. It took her only seconds to find something that caught her fancy.

“Suguri! You absolutely must change into this one,” she said, holding up a… something that she couldn’t quite define, but which was soft mauve with ruffles and she loved it immediately. “It’s so poofy. I’ve never thought of you in poofy clothes before! One twirl is all I ask. Just one little twirl, and I won’t ask you to try on anything else.”

Suguri sighed. “No. We’re looking for clothes for Sora, not me. Put that down and help me look.”

“Just a twirl, Suguri,” Hime continued, her eyes glittering. “Do you know how much my life would be improved by twirling? You would be making me the happiest I’ve been in hours.”

“ ‘Hours’ isn’t a very long time.”

“Well, we did kiss after dinner, you know. Please give me a twirl?”

“I’ll give you a twirl,” Suguri replied sternly, “when you’ve earned a twirl.”

Hime smiled. “I can accept those terms. And how would I go about earning a twirl, hm? What about a sensual massage, or perhaps I could–”

“Start by looking in the boxes. I’m sure I had some oversized t-shirts packed away,” Suguri replied, not quite as definitively as she would have liked. “If we can get her a full outfit for tomorrow, you can pick out two things for me to try on.”

It was a deal she didn’t offer lightly, but she was sure – almost sure – she didn’t actually own anything that would make her feel dangerously exposed if Hime asked her to wear it, and she had previously established with Hime that ‘nothing’ did not count as either a thing or an article of clothing. She was safe, probably, and Hime had begun to paw pensively through the cardboard boxes, just as planned.

After a few minutes of productive searching, Suguri finally pulled out a pair of leggings that hadn’t been attacked by moths. She owned multiple pairs of leggings, and they were all too big for her; fundamentally, she didn’t quite understand any form of leg accessory that wasn’t a thigh-high. It was knowledge she had never needed. Thigh-highs were simply the superior choice in every eventuality, although she had stockpiled some alternatives in case something shifted in the moons. Sora would almost certainly know how they worked, and they would almost certainly fit her. That was victory, as Suguri knew and understood it.

“Oh! I found one in large!” Hime called, after another five minutes of rummaging through clothes (and earmarking ones for Suguri to model for her later). “And it doesn’t smell more than a decade old.”

It was, she thought privately, a very strange item for Suguri to own. It was in large, for one thing, and that did not square with her adorable, pocket-sized friend. For another, it was pink. Very pink. Absolutely, undeniably the pinkest shirt she had ever seen, in the hottest shade. It was a shirt you would hesitate to look at without sunglasses, and the sunglasses would have to be rose-tinted at that. She couldn’t imagine Sora actually wearing it – Sora didn’t seem to her to be a very pink kind of person – but seeing it on Suguri would be unthinkable. Unpinkable, even.

She was so taken aback by the majestic pinkness of it that she almost didn’t spot the logo splashed across the front, in a font that was more stylish than readable. It took her a moment to puzzle out the words, and when she had, they meant just as little to her as when she started. She turned to show the shirt to Suguri, who quite understandably reacted as though she had shone a floodlight in her face.

“What,” she asked curiously, “is ‘Poppomikki Sunshine?’”

Suguri let out a long, tired sigh, and scratched the back of her head. “We’d better go downstairs.”

The sound of Suguri’s old and trusty laptop starting up was to Hime as the dinner bell was to Pavlov’s dogs; as soon as she heard it, her body braced for the dopamine rush that came from watching videos of cats. Her shoulders went slack, her muscles loosened, and altogether she became pre-emptively soft and pliable, all the better for snuggling on a loveseat with. She was mildly disappointed when Suguri did not immediately click on the grand archive of funny pet videos to which they had become so accustomed, but the feeling of peace was so powerful that she couldn’t bring herself to worry about it.

Across the room, Sora had wriggled out of her sleeping bag and into her new clothes. She had become a world-class wriggler in the past few months, and the transition was smooth and easy. The top that would have swamped Suguri was still too big for her, but the leggings seemed at least serviceable. She still hoped she could persuade Hime to fix her jacket, or at least have a replica made in a better size. It was her favourite, and she had begun to replace all the wartime memories it held for her with new, happy memories, full of fun and snacks. Mostly snacks.

“Poppomikki Sunshine,” Suguri explained as she waited for the video hosting service to load, “is a pop idol I used to watch. I wanted to see one of her live shows, but never went. So I bought a shirt instead.”

“A shirt three sizes too big for you?”

“They only did medium and large. I thought I could use it as pyjamas. It didn’t look so bright in the preview.”

Hime smiled. If it had looked that bright in the preview, nobody would have bought it. “Still… a pop idol? I didn’t think that would be your taste in music. I was imagining… oh, I don’t know. Something more electronic.”

“Everybody thinks that. But pop idols aren’t my favourite. They’re just… always there, you know? The genres I like keep dying out and coming back in worse forms a hundred years later, but pop idols always come back exactly the same.”

“It’s much less cute when you explain it like that.”

“I’m not a cute fanatic. Leave that to Saki,” Suguri grumbled. “Anyway, Poppomikki caught my eye because she seemed more mature than a lot of other pop idols. …That’s why, when people started shortening her name to PMS, she ended up taking a long career break.”

Hime snorted. “Oh, my. Well, I do feel sorry for her, but… she did walk into it, didn’t she?”

“She came back about three years ago. That was when I bought that shirt. From what I can tell, her sound hasn’t changed at all,” Suguri said, shrugging. “This footage from one of her live performances last month, I think.”

It wasn’t an official video. Official cameramen didn’t produce footage like that without being very, very drunk, and they definitely didn’t use bargain basement camcorders, or sit at the very back of the arena. In the video, the stage looked like a very vague blur, and the singer was barely more than a smudge. A smudge that kept moving, because whoever had the camcorder had very shaky hands. But the audio quality seemed fair enough; beyond the chatter of the crowd, Hime could just about pick up the singer making her pre-set speeches.

“It’s great to be here with you all! I’d love to stop and say hello, but instead, I’m gonna hit you with my first song right away! Everybody enjoy the concert, and remember: Love! And! Peace!”

The last three words were echoed by the crowd in a great roar before the music started. It was sparkly synthesisers, jaunty piano tracks and a bouncy baseline, the kind of music that was very light on the brain but fun enough to listen to. The singer, smudgey as she was, seemed to be full of energy on stage, zipping through her dance routine in full motion. Although she certainly seemed older than most pop idols Hime had heard of, and her voice was a little huskier, she seemed to be having an absolute ball.

“This isn’t bad,” she whispered, snuggling a little closer to Suguri on the loveseat. It wasn’t really danceable. She preferred music that matched her sweeping, graceful movements for that. But it was at least fun, and she held fun as a very high priority in life.

“Mm. There’s something that makes her stand out,” Suguri agreed with a nod.

“Sham,” Sora said.

How Sora had managed to sneak up to them while wearing a shirt that lit her up like a camping flare was a very valid question. But it was the strange, blunt tone in her voice that made Hime sit up and take notice. She was never exactly loquacious, but there was always something gentle in the way that she spoke, and it wasn’t there now. There was no way she could be that annoyed at pop music, was there? She threw a glance in Suguri’s direction, before trying to mollify her somewhat. “Well, it’s a little bit over-produced, but I don’t think it’s fair to call it a–”

“No! It’s Sham,” Sora interrupted. She wasn’t shouting. Not yet. Even when she was angry, she was quiet in the same way a panther is quiet until the moment it strikes. But it might have been the loudest she’d spoken since they first met her, when she was lashing out at the world with all her might. “I knew her. I fought her. I can tell.”

Suguri lowered her chin, thinking deeply. “Sham. Sham… I remember seeing the name in records of the Great War.”

“She gave me my combat training, and tried to bring me back when I defected. We fought, and she lost. That was the last time I saw her.” Sora shook her head, waving away memories with a sweep of her shaggy hair. “I need to speak with her.”

Hime frowned, and steeled her nerve. This was the part she didn’t like – the part that Suguri, for all her strengths, just couldn’t do. She curled her hand around Suguri’s, and took a deep breath. “Sora… It’s been ten thousand years. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but… it’s awfully unlikely that this pop idol is one of your old comrades, isn’t it? You can’t even see her face in the video.”

Suguri gave her hand a squeeze. It was difficult to dampen Sora’s excitement – the sense of purpose that she had been lacking so far, that seemed to roll off her in waves now. But false hope and high expectations were an awful combination. She needed something, someone, to be reasonable, or else a bad result might break her heart. Or worse – she’d be looking for the faces of people she knew in crowds for as long as she lived.

“I met Nath on the street,” she replied, pointedly. “I know it’s her. I would know her anywhere. In the video, her hair is longer on one side. She has a burn scar under that. She speaks the same way, and her voice is just right. It has to be Sham.” She shook her head again, balled her hands into tight, angry fists. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going.”

For a moment, the room was still, the silence broken only by the tinny laptop speakers. They had known Sora was stubborn, and a little headstrong; how could she not be, after deciding to face two armies by herself for the sake of peace? But it was the first time it had brought them into conflict with her. The first time it wasn’t just a minor thing that lurked in the background, something that could be laughed off.

“Silly girl,” Hime replied finally, so lightly that it didn’t sting. Her words were on tiptoes, on eggshells. “Did anybody tell you not to? Of course, we’re going to support you on this. You’re our family, after all. Besides, if you never checked you would never know for sure, would you? I’m just saying that you should be prepared for the possibility that it’s not her.”

Sora’s brow furrowed, and her mouth curled into a frown. “Oh. …Sorry. I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

“We’re not on different sides. There’s no ‘you against us’. Just ‘us’,” Suguri said, bringing up another tab on her browser. “Let me see if I can get tickets. We could barge into a concert, but it wouldn’t be a good first impression.”

“No autographs for gatecrashers,” Hime winked, and nudged Suguri with her elbow.

“And no back-stage pass, either. She usually does a meet and greet with fans backstage after each concert… that’d be the best time,” Suguri murmured. “Next concert is in two weeks. I’ll have to go for aftermarket tickets, but we should be able to get in.”

“See? You’re in good hands. Suguri happens to be her number one fan.”

“Hush.” She tilted her head to look at Sora, and although her red eyes were as calm as they always were, there was warmth in them as well. “Can you wait that long? Two weeks?”

It was a full five seconds before she finally nodded. “…Mn. It’ll give me chance to think about what I want to say. I beat her up pretty bad last time… I hope she isn’t mad.”

“If she can stay mad at you for ten thousand years, then she has a rare talent. I can barely stay mad at you for half an hour,” Hime remarked.

“And I can get some new clothes. I don’t want to look scruffy.”

“You and Suguri always look scruffy. It’s charming, in its own way, she said affectionately. “My two little scruffpots.”

“…I’m bigger than you, though.”

Hime’s grin became sly. “Oh, so you are. Well, then, ‘Big Sis’, I’ll let you take the bins out from now on. You’re bigger and stronger, after all.”

“…You’re too cheeky,” Sora said, slowly shaking her head. The yawn was in her voice before it hit her body; it was high time for a nap, and she knew it. “Thank you for looking for tickets, Suguri.”

Suguri gave her a half-smile. “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t been to a concert for a long time. It’s a good opportunity.”

“Don’t I get a thank you?” Hime asked.

“…You didn’t do anything, though.”

“I found that t-shirt you’re wearing.”

Sora looked down at her shirt, which was less hot pink than molten-core-of-the-sun pink, and thought that losing such a shirt would be infinitely more difficult than finding it. But a thank you is easy to find and painless to give, so she thanked Hime with a nod of the head and a formless sound before returning to the warmth and comfort of her sleeping bag.

A quiet hour passed with Suguri typing away at the computer, sending enquiries and steadfastly resisting the temptation to watch cat videos with Hime, who was no longer sat beside her on the loveseat and had instead more or less draped herself across Suguri’s lap. Sora had retreated to her regular napping position, but her eyes remained open and alert, thoughts ticking across her brain. Finally, Suguri sighed and stretched, unused to sitting in one position for quite so long.

“Sora? I’m going to leave the computer on, in case you want to listen to some of her other songs. Don’t stay up too late,” she said. “Hime, are you still awake?”

“…If I say no, will you carry me up to bed?”

“I’d consider it.”

“Then no. I am sleeping very deeply and will be for the foreseeable future.”

“Alright.”

It was a little odd to see Suguri scoop up a girl who was larger than she was, but Suguri was stronger than the average bear, and Hime was probably was probably using some level of flight to help her cheat a little bit. With one last nod to Sora, they disappeared up the stairs. Slowly, she began to wriggle her way across the floor to the computer.

When they came down in the morning, there were soft, dark circles under her eyes. But she knew the entire first album off by heart.  

A/N: I'm not a huge fan of this, but I'm happy just to have it done at this point. I'm going to take a teensy break from Sugiverse and try out some other characters, settings and styles to see if that rejuvenates me a little bit, but I'll come back for part 2 of this before too long. At least it has lots of SugiHime flirting?