Nyoro Hoge can't remember the last time it had gotten this bad, if only because when it does happen everything takes on an unreal quality. Even pressing her hands down as firm as she could against a flat surface couldn't stop them from shaking. Every movement around her snapped her attention in that direction, like a field mouse that had wandered into a raptor exhibit at the zoo. She felt cold all over. Except for a roiling heat in her nervous guts.
Any second now she was going to throw up.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
The sound, if she was even making any, couldn't reach her deafened ears. It wasn't just the sound dulled out, either. The whole world was fuzzier, even with her glasses on, and it was giving her a headache. But not as bad as her own body was. When she looks down at her trembling hands, she can see only a kind of heat haze, and the shaded wood below it.
You haven't come so far, after all. After everything else, there's still this enemy you can't face.
Hoge tries to swallow but her mouth is dry with fear. She's terrified of this foe: the worst day of the year. The day that makes everything she hates about being herself come into crystal clear, unignorable, underlined sixty times an hour, deeply painful focus. Valentine's Day.
The 19th Ninja Art: Confections
She'd spent night after night letting herself into various school facilities to pursue her master plan. Armed with little more than a knife, a bump key, and a half-baked excuse about classroom morale and her duties as a representative, Hoge had stalked across Shiketsu and behind the back of night crew. Support course gear labs. On-campus kitchen facilities. Storage rooms. All were within her reach with the security systems blinded to her.
She had skulked in with cacao butter and bags of nuts, filched sugars and utensils, printed off or wrangled together pour molds. One night, she accidentally wailed in frustration and had to brace herself into a ceiling corner to avoid the flashlight beam of a security guard damp with flop sweat. Another night, she experienced a major setback when some white-furred yokai appeared and devoured trays of chocolate balls right out of the freezer of the teacher's lounge. She'd been surviving off caffeine pills and a punishing schedule of timed naps, and had also been sneaking into her own home far after curfew with the evidence of chocolatiering exploits all over her.
Truly, life and liberty had been risked for this feat.
And all of that effort might have been worth nothing. Hoge couldn't get her hopes up. The evidence of previous years was too powerful, and crushed her nascent hopes utterly. Even obligation candies had been rare in Nyoro Hoge's school life, since almost no one bothered to put one on every desk in a class. And friend chocolate was of course not worth mentioning. The only one she'd ever gotten had been from herself and it tasted disgusting, like bitter irony and salted tears.
On the one hand, that's why she didn't want any of the other kids to feel anything close to that sting. Even the ones she didn't particularly like (or want to be in her glorious country) didn't deserve such a terrible blow. She'd gone all out to make sure everyone got something. On the other hand, it had driven her into this animal state of panic and grief, knowing with the same conviction she gave to the laws of gravity that it would be another year of giving with no receiving. It would hurt so much worse than other years because of how hard she'd tried to put herself out there this time, too.
Her stomach clenched again and she folded forward as if bowing to the front of the classroom. Maybe the terror wouldn't come up through her throat, actually. Maybe it would descend messily out of her--
The whole classroom was moving at once. Her eyes widen to full and both them and her head flick about in all directions. This is how she had been trained to look for danger and opportunity, but at the moment all it told her was that Rosethorn was saying something and that the Hot Girl Squad was dispersing from the center of the room with bags open.
Yoshi!! Time to strike!
Tension transformed into motion. Frightful Hoge disappeared into the depths and up rose the all-business Marumaru. Leaving her special deliveries in their separate container, Maru pulls out the bag of bespoke treats with their little ribboned sacks. In a flash, Maru ducks out of the classroom by the closest exit, sprints the few steps down the hall, and slips back inside by the other doorway to bypass the busy classroom and shortcut to the front.
With a practiced spinning toss, Maru gets the repurposed ring box onto Rosethorn-sensei's desk without having to break away from her pacing. In the top lid was a simple message ("Thank you for believing in me") with a foil-wrapped chocolate filled with hazelnut creme. She'd had to teach herself how to use a confectioner's syringe and reseal the surface for that one, which came in handy on later nights.
Turning on the ball of her foot, she pulls Yui's treat bag out with one fluid motion, and drops it onto the corner of her desk. Inside the yellow gossamer bag, four chocolate balls - the standard amount - with bright red stripes of candy piping decorating them. White rock salt sprinkled the tops and dried cherry puree hid within. The girl's soft and sweet interior had not escaped the critical eye of ever-watchful Hoge.
With a simple cross and sidestep, she was at Jugo's desk. His bag had two giant balls instead, hatched like cross buns and azuki flavored. Things had become complicated for the boy, too complicated for a simple soul, and Hoge offered this sweet up to bring peace through uncomplicated tradition. But this was only the beginning of her journey. Something flickered in Maru's peripheral vision, and instinct drives her into a backward shoulder-led spin that narrowly dodged an unidentified classmate.
Maru found herself at the desk of the new student. He was grinning like a kid at a carnival, looking all about at the buzz of activity. Taking advantage of the moment of distraction, Maru brings out his own last-minute gift. She was too focused on perfect physical execution of her self-assigned task to feel any guilt about Nijimura's less personal chocolates: four simple balls of increasing darkness from Milk to Baker's. She simply hadn't collected enough data to become more precise than this.
Noah's bag came out before Maru consciously realized she was even in motion down the row. His had been a real challenge, both because of the custom mold and because if the gift was too nice then Hoge might have caught a bullet. His chocolates were shaped like the crucifixes of his foreigner cult, cut from an extruded row with a hot knife. The mass was the same as the standard for the rest of the class, but numbered higher because of their geometry. The crosses clattered together as the bag tumbled from a roll of Maru's hand, and she was off.
Midstride, Christopher's chocolates appear on his desk as if by magic. Maru's newly acquired skills of legerdemain were used as a subtle boast. His sweets had actually been nearly last to be made, constructed from the remainders of the other experiments in class. The single mass of mixed chocolate and candy thereby had the flavors of the entire classroom unevenly distributed through it: a cheeky commentary on his Mirror abilities. Simply to show off a little, Hoge had spent a great deal of effort to pipe on a famous haiku about Japan's resurrection from the Warlord Period in minuscule white characters. She had to use a pneumatic tool arm in the construction labs to pull that one off.
Alone of the kids in class, Soujuuro Imai looks up as Maru rushes close. His furrowed brows show it was her sheer presence that revealed her, and not the shade she had become. She couldn't spare the time to do this how she'd prefer, so she slid the translucent cloth bag to the center of his desk without a word. He looks down at them and sees the pairs of black chocolates and white chocolates, studded and dusted with sprinkles all the same colors as his distinctive eyes. Mint flavoring was added to these, an unsubtle pun on his coolness.
Before he could say anything, Maru kicked out into a slide through a giant pair of muscled legs. She popped up in the next row with the next bag already in hand: bitter chocolates carefully molded as the heads of crescent-eyed foxes. Naturally, Hoge had not spared any effort in the treats meant for Chi-chan, and Maru carefully placed them in a place of prominence on Mitsurugi-sensei's desk. Each fox face actually had a different mystery flavor to cut the taste of the extra-dark chocolates, and each expressed Hoge's admiration of her friend's yamato nature with highly traditional flavors.
Hoge might have done the next one differently, but the Maru mindset was the one in control. Ashleigh suddenly found herself catching a bag that seemed to appear mid-lob. A near-silent gasp escaped the blue-haired girl's lips, but she managed not to fumble the fragile package. Within, dark chocolates with cross-pupiled smiley faces enjoyed the secret they held. By far the most complex flavor, Hoge had gone through multiple batches to develop a honey gel with the infusion of flowers like lavender and borage. She nearly made herself sick from dutifully eating the imperfect tries.
Maru was already thinking about the next stage of the classroom rush when she got to Sally's desk. She hopped up onto the chair and tossed down the obligation chocolates almost as an afterthought. In contrast to this dismissive moment, the chocolates were high-effort: a custom mold of flat disks with angel wings and an arc of halo. Red, white, and blue sprinkle stars covered the tops of the milk chocolate disks. They had been hard to source; hopefully they didn't end up tasting too French. Because of the flavoring added to Sally's batch, they were the only scraps that Hoge had thrown away untasted and undispersed to others. American Sally would be the only one having to suffer the traditional additive of that hellish place. That night, Maru had worn her helmet to isolate her from the flavoring of butyric acid.
Maru tumbled forward to slip between foot traffic and get directly into Kaylee's wake as she broke through the chaos of the girls' scramble. Staying in the shadow of the giant, Maru's hands swiftly retrieved and simultaneously threw out the Hivemind's ribbon bags in a rapid machine-like rhythm. Each girl had gotten slightly undersized chocolate balls so they had equaled five total, in case they wanted to trade them out later. Each one had also gotten a different grade of chocolate, in a gradient from Faith's white chocolate balls to Max's unsweetened 100% cocoa. Each girl's chocolates also contained different nuts inside and fragments crusting them.
Maru slipped her hand into Kaylee's momentarily before darting away. She left behind the yellow gossamer bag for the green-haired girl, the ribbon tie matching her hair color. It struck Hoge as unfair that such a large girl should have to have proportionally small chocolates, so her set were unabashedly huge and individually wrapped in gold foil. She was also no fool when it came to nutrition, and made sure they were high protein treats so as not to detract from Kaylee's gains. Each one was filled with creamy peanut butter and held a whole peanut in the center. The chocolates themselves had been mixed with coconut shavings.
Maru flicked out a golden chocolate coin from her sleeve and slapped it on Tame's desk in passing. She was a special case, after all, and the two would have to square things up later that day. The chocolate coin had one of Maru's message stickers on it, with the chibified helmet's eyes glowing as red stars. In permanent marker, Hoge had written "gift later" over the sticker's metal face.
Maru was in the home stretch. The first trial in today's torturous ordeal nearly done. She planted her feet directly between Shinkan and Sora's desks, each hand palming a bag. Standing with her arms outstretched and level, she merely turned her wrists, and the bags dropped to the wooden surfaces. Shinkan's gift was hammer-smashed fragments of coal, all coated in chocolate from the last of the re-melted scraps. Couldn't get dirt into anyone else's food, after all. Sora's chocolates were marbled balls of dark and light chocolate and solid all the way through.
The treat bag was nearly empty. It hung loosely at Maru's side. She drew in a deep breath and held it so she could focus entirely on speed and fluidity. Left foot forward, and Hifumi's bag appeared into the pile. Cinnamon flavored milk chocolate, with red crosshatch icing. Launching herself sideways, landing in another step. She juggled out Bobby's bag, joining its compatriots on the desk. Four suns, their sweet chocolate domes holding bright and tart lemon filling. Smoothly into her stride, Maru spared a moment to sling another chocolate message coin to smirking Inigo, who deftly caught it in the grasp of one hand. Step. Hiro's bag flew in a gentle arc with Maru's borrowed momentum. It tumbled to a stop, the dark chocolate holding within a milk chocolate ganache filled with real coffee. And step. Maru lifted up the bag to roll out Orochi's bag, the delicately sweet white chocolates holding candied ginger and mixed with different powdered peppers.
And step and step and step. Hoge kept going right past her desk and through the doorway again, her silent gait not echoing down the school hall. She flees to an upstairs bathroom. She dunks her head under the cold water of a faucet. She shudders and throws up.
At the end of lunch, the chipper cyborg Takara Tame spots Hoge leaving 1-E's classroom. She's carrying a mostly-empty bag, with only two strange lumps left in it. Though Hoge's expression is a little blurry and her edges definitely staticy, Tame can still tell when Hoge spots her. Her friend and class rep shyly adjusts her glasses and clasps her hands guardedly in front of her waist.
Tame lifts a hand in greeting. "'Yo.' Some of the others taught me that. 'Yo,' Hoge." Tame says it with precision and formality, and smiles with pride. Friendship points, increase! Hoge's lips twitch in something like a smile.
"Good afternoon, Tame-chan. Do you have a minute to spare?"
"Sure. Most of my lunch time is free time, since I don't eat the same way."
Hoge grimaces. "Ah. I was... worrying that was the case."
With shame on her face and a slump in her shoulders, Hoge slowly lifts one of the lumps out of her gift bag. She holds it out for Tame to see.
"I don't suppose you make an exception for sweets?" In Hoge's hand is another one of her delicate little sacks tied with ribbon. Inside, little anatomically correct hearts, decorated with light blue patterns reminiscent of circuit diagrams.
"They've got raspberry jam," Hoge nearly sighs.
Tame hides behind a friendly smile. "It's the thought that counts, Hoge-chan. Thank you." She reaches out to scoop up the bag, as if carefully lifting a baby bird. That's when she notices the lump that's been tied to the back.
It's a strange home-made device, cobbled together from hardware parts and sealed messily. There's no mistaking it as anything but hand-made by unpracticed hands. Metal prongs lift through the top of a plastic tube. A wrapped wire snakes out of the side.
"Huh? What's this?" Tame's big, photo-negative eyes blink.
Hoge uncharacteristically shuffles her feet. "It's an... acid battery. It's not completely charged, because I needed to make sure it hadn't shorted."
Tame lifts a fist to her chin and starts laughing. Hoge, taken aback, lifts her interwoven hands to her chest and flickers in place. Her voice takes on the tinny quality of rising nerves.
"I had to make it without using too many supplies that the Support course would miss and if it's not correcteitherletmeknowsoIcan-"
Tame steps forward to hug Hoge, still giggling, and Hoge silences herself with an oddly metallic squeak. In a couple moments, Hoge releases her arms and hugs Tame back.
Once Hoge's calmed down, Tame takes a step back and gives another wave. "It's a good gift. Thank you, Hoge! I'm going to put them somewhere safe and take them home. 'Yo!'"
Blushing but smiling, Hoge waves at the gynoid turning and walking away. When she's mostly alone in the hall, she reaches into her bag for the very last package to deliver. Everyone she knows in the hero course has their painstakingly crafted gifts, save the most important one of all. As she thinks about it, her breath catches, her eyes sting with the first hint of tears, and her stomach flips again.
Hoge draws out a red cardboard heart box like she's drawing a sword. She holds it level in front of herself, on her fingertips, like it might burn her. Swallowing hard, she opens the lid to check on the contents. She releases a long breath she hadn't realized she was holding. A rainbow assortment of little dragons have replaced all the samplers in each compartment.
Thankfully, none of their antlers or talons have broken off yet. Batch after failed batch, learning to put them together like hobby miniatures, learning how difficult it was to consistently color chocolate, learning especially how fragile they could be. She didn't want to look at them too long or she'd obsess over their imperfections all over again and lose her nerve. Hoge couldn't live with herself if she gave her beloved Ini nothing more than a store-bought choco-coin. She might as well find a muddy ditch to drown in.
She closed the lid and held the heart box protectively to her chest. The last leg of her mission. And then the only thing left was the inevitable consequences. Hoge decided to find Inigo before she had to face the classroom again, and the undoubtedly empty desk, and the deserved chastisement from Rosethorn-sensei about the skipped lesson. If she had even noticed that Hoge was gone.
But Inigo would have noticed. He always noticed. Unconsciously, she raised the box to her lips, and her blush spread.
Right. Find Inigo. How hard could it be...?
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Yosh'! Let's do this!
Hoge made herself calmly put one foot in front of the other.