The Theme Park Episode
On the Eastern side of Kyoto looms forested mountains. Twisting footpaths and harshly sloped country roads are the only ways to navigate them. Much of the forest has been retained for the use of wildlife, with the occasional trespass by people looking to heal their spirits with shinrin-yoku. In this atmosphere of tranquility and treachery, one might be able to find the Mitsurugi Dojo and the young girl that is its master.
And there, on a certain afternoon in October, young Mitsurugi Chihiro sits in the garden with her pupil: Nyoro Hoge. A breeze carries the sounds of the forest and the music of the leaves to fill the comfortable quiet between them.
Hoge looks at all the callouses on her hands. Old ones on her fingertips that were cut by musical strings. New ones on her palms, formed by sword grips. Each one proof of her hard work. 'Sessatakuma,' she thinks to herself, and brightly smiles only on the inside. Her face remains unemotive. She squeezes her hands into fists and focuses on the sensation of different kinds of skin.
"Chihiro-chan," Hoge pipes up, using the more familiar address now that the day's formal lessons were done. Chihiro turns her head to blankly look at Hoge and wait for the rest of the words. "I would like to bring you to an amusement park on Sunday."
Chihiro blinks twice.
"Why?"
"There are a few reasons... the first is that I have been invited by some other girls in the Hero program and, given the last time, I would be more comfortable if you were there."
Chihiro turns her head to watch the sōzu in her garden fill with water. That was a lot of people. 'What if someone recognizes me? Or what if I lose control?'
"There are other reasons?"
"Yes."
Donk! goes the sōzu.
"What are your other reasons?"
"I could come up with more in time. The two I have right now are as follows. Second, I want to see what happens when you get on a scary ride."
Chihiro closes her eyes. 'These are only getting more flimsy.'
"I don't know. I was going to ..." 'If I say the wrong thing, she'll try to help me instead of making better friends.' "wash? My hair?"
Donk!
"I'd like to tell you my last reason, Chihiro-chan. And if you still don't want to go, I'll say no more about it."
"...Okay."
"I am making a place for you." Chihiro's eyes snap open and a subtle expression breaks through her placid face. She whips her head towards Hoge, who looks back with open determination. "And I will make a place for you in others' lives, as well. This is part of that."
Chihiro controls her face and steadies her breathing. Hoge puts in special effort not to pat Chihiro on the head, though her hand twitched. 'Sensei can be cute sometimes. Like a wild fox.' The taller girl sighs inwardly, Foxes are not for petting. (And, because she can't help herself, a small and terse voice inside corrects the nomenclature. 'Vulpes vulpes japonica, but more likely V. v. schrencki on Hokkaidō.')
"Okay," says Chihiro, once she is sure of her voice. "I will go with you on Sunday."
After a few moments of consideration, she adds, "It won't be all day, will it?"
"Of course not. I couldn't stand that many people all day long!"
Days Later
"Ojamashimasu!"
Hoge hurries out of her tengu-geta and lets them tip over with the quiet clatter of wood. A satchel bag and a fanny-pack are haphazardly dropped beside the shoes. She raises a hand to push a flat-brimmed straw hat from her head; it hangs from her neck by the strap. She pauses in Chihiro's front hall only long enough to cock her head and roll her eyes, listening intently for sounds of activity. Even without her stealth-oriented quirk Wasuremono, the soft tabi she's wearing would mask her footsteps as she braves deeper into the less-than-ideally maintained domicile. Richly brown, pleated salwar and a sleeveless white-and-gray houndstooth blouse with chest ruffles and mandarin collar complete the look. This is what Hoge thinks of as casual.
In passing, Hoge touches some of the repairs that have recently been done to Chihiro's home. Here, where Hoge's distant cousin Hifumi replaced shelf brackets; there, where her boyfriend Inigo('s more responsible dragon construct) patched a weakened wall. Other examples, too, done by people Hoge only has a passing familiarity of in Chihiro's disparate circle. Everyone leaving physical marks on the life of the sword-savant.
Somehow it summons up bitter memories from the eventful summer. Memories of forest fires and desperate conflicts, memories of a burned and wounded Chihiro risking her very life just to make a rampaging villain turn a different direction. Memories of fretful nights that Hoge spent trying to scheme a way into lowering her friend's burden. Hoge adjusts her glasses with a quick push of two fingers. 'Of course she'd do anything to keep this place intact. It's the best proof that she exists.' Hoge's eyes start to sting and she chases the sensation away by calling out again.
The sound has a strange quality, coming through Wasuremono's interference and the tightness in her own throat. But both lessen as she forces herself to keep talking.
"Chihiro? I brought breakfast. The sun's up and we need to get on a train to reach the park and meet everyone."
Hoge doesn't wait to be greeted or lead around. She walks through the rooms as if she's lived here her whole life, even though the two girls only met around half a year ago. But each room she passes is quiet and empty in the early morning light.
"I have natto. And pickles." She stops in front of Chihiro's bedroom, unwilling to make this final transgression.
"Even some of that nasty bitter salad you like."
Light catches the corner of her eye. From here, she can see - through the glass - a papered window obscured by garden cover, illuminated from lights within the dojo. Hoge stands inside Chihiro's empty house, with a bag full of sealed bowls in one hand and her other braced on her hip.
"You should have expected this, Hoge."
Chihiro pauses in her morning training routine: she can hear the wooden teeth of someone's geta outside the dojo far before the visitor kneels to knock on the wooden frame of the sliding door. Yet, Mitsurugi Chihiro has a practiced warrior's mentality, and remains alert for battle or trickery. Anyone could be outside, after all - Chihiro's no stranger to attack nor to the movements in the criminal underworld. She carefully stalks towards the doorway with her training saber in hand. The blade is no less deadly in this young master's hand simply because it lacks an edge: after all, so does a mace. Or an oar.
Bracing for a violent surprise, Chihiro places a hand on the door frame and holds her breath. She can feel the chi flowing from the cells of the figure on the other side, carried by their breath, and being drunk by Chihiro's pores. In one swift, efficient motion, Chihiro slides the door completely open, set in her stance, the katana turning in her grip so the curve faces upwards - ready to slice or parry in an instant.
Hoge sits on her knees, bowing her head, the sack of food dishes set squarely at her side. "I do not request permission to enter. That would mean I have to address you as sensei, and for now, I'd rather be using -chan."
Not acknowledging the swift motion or loud hiss of the door, Hoge places a hand on the crinkling sack. "I brought you breakfast, but no soup. Ojamashimasu."
'And you will, at that.' "Good morning, Hoge."
Without another word, Hoge shuffles back in her kneeling position and begins to retrieve the dishes from the plastic bag. White rice, soy sauce, pungent natto beans, a mixed green and herbaceous salad, various pickles, a small amount of mild minced fish, and disposable bamboo chopsticks, all in their own little containers. Chihiro sets her sword aside and sits down with Hoge. One girl outside the dojo and one within, both eating together at the threshold.
Hoge holds a hand in front of her mouth so she can talk and chew. "Whenever you change, we can go to the train. We're headed to that big park out in the country and are supposed to meet the others at a deer statue. 10AM."
Chihiro waits until she can finish chewing and swallow. "That's in four hours. Is the train ride really that long?"
"Ninety minutes or so. And then there's getting to the station, and walking from the station. And getting ready to leave. And accounting for any accidents or incidents. And I've never been there so we'll also have to find the right statue. Actually, I might not have allotted enough time." Hoge bends forward to flick several small pickles into her mouth.
Chihiro enjoys the sharply bitter salad leaves before replying. "Do I need to dress any special way?"
"No. I read that most amusement parks require a lot of walking, though."
Chihiro tilts her head at the comment. She looks at Hoge's footwear and the single high, narrow tooth at the center of each one.
Hoge catches the look. "To keep training balance and conserving momentum. Sundays are still training days."
'Sasuga...,' is all Chihiro thinks. "Alright. I'll just dress as normal."
The pair of friends chat leisurely as they finish eating, then Hoge busies herself with small cleaning chores as she waits for Chihiro to shower and get ready for the day trip. Neither one thinks anything of Chihiro leaving in traditional woven sandals and a full autumnal kimono. Not even when they make the long walk down the mountain paths to the nearest train station, surrounded by people in casualwear and business suits.
Chihiro and Hoge look out over a cobblestone ring surrounding the park fence. Even this early in the morning, a crowd flows through it, congealing at various animal statues. Each one is verdigris bronze and has an old-fashioned lamp post emerging from its back or enclosed in its limbs. Around the perimeter are wooden benches - Hoge notes silently that none of them seem to have anyone bumming a nap on them. 'The security here must be proactive and continuous,' she tells herself. Looking around, she spots the unobtrusive housing for small cameras spaced along the top of certain fence posts. For a reason she can't describe, Wasuremono ticks a little higher in intensity, and her edges begin to diffuse.
Chihiro notices and blames the crowd. She looks about, one part of her mind making sure no one is glaring at them while the other part looks for the deer statue among the menagerie. 'Tanuki, pond turtle, cranes... The meeting spots go all the way around the park.' People lounge nearby each one as a landmark for meeting. Small children climb on some of them and scream-laugh while pretending to ride - much to the consternation or belabored silence of their parents. Most everyone is looking at an electronic device or scanning the crowd. A few individuals are even moving above the throng of visitors, kept aloft by mutations or esoteric powers. No one seems especially put off by the unlicensed Quirk usage; the overall mood is light and everyone seems a bit self-absorbed.
"I don't see the statue."
"And I do not recognize anyone from here. We'll have to circle carefully. I'm glad we made such good time."
There is still more than an hour until the meeting time.
Hoge clops like a horse as she walks over the cobbles in her wooden shoes. Or, at least, like a distant horse, as the more surrounded she becomes in the crowd, the more actively Wasuremono suppresses the sounds she makes as well as the light reflecting off her. People begin to walk into her and jostle her around without meaning to, sending Hoge into further agitation and heightening the effect. Chihiro, who is used to Hoge's body language and idiosyncrasies from near-daily exposure, is noticing the hunching of her shoulders and the guarded placement of her arms. She knows Hoge is becoming frustrated. She knows Hoge can't, or won't, speak up.
"Excuse us. Coming through. Careful, please. Two making way." Chihiro starts a patter of flat-affect polite interjections, one hand on Hoge's back to mark her place. The crowd starts to notice the blurry girl and her smaller companion, and mistaking the poker face of the latter for expressing the irritation of the former, starts giving them both a wider berth. Chihiro gracefully slides between gaps in the crowd, ever-aware of her surroundings, and Hoge stays close - guided by the wake. Gradually, color and sharpness return to her appearance and her hand raises almost to full patting height before being tucked carefully behind Hoge's back.
"Thank you very much. I'm sorry to... no. Actually, just thank you. I appreciate the kindness."
Chihiro gives a single affirming nod without looking back. 'Stag beetle. Snow monkey. Akita? Is there any order to this?'
Suddenly, Hoge sticks an arm out, pointing over the heads of several members of the crowd. "Antlers!"
Chihiro cranes her neck to see, but it's no use. "Let's go that way, then."
It takes only a few minutes more to reach the pair of shika deer. A lamp post sticks up from the stag's back like a parasitic plant stalk.
"Mm. We're the first to arrive." Hoge looks over the clump of people waiting around the deer and spins her phone out of a deep pocket just to glance at the time. Moments later it disappears again.
"Nine-eleven AM." She looks around to see if there's any snack sellers around and is disappointed to see that this part of the park's exterior is as empty as the rest of it. Then she glances at the young boy climbing up onto the stag with jealousy.
"Chi-chan, have you ever ridden a deer?"
Chihiro pretends not to hear.
"Or a boar or anything, Chihiro-chan?"
"Not on purpose," says Chihiro, rewarding the better nickname with a reply. "What kind of life do you think I'm living, anyway?"
"Ghibliesque."
"Eh?"
"Nevermind. It's an old style of cartoons. I hope one of the forest creatures lets you do that before you become too big for them to carry."
"Should I want to?"
"It would be fun, wouldn't it?"
Chihiro cocks her head and thinks about it. She can already race around the forest faster than any other animal can run, just by using her quirk. And most of the beasts that would be big enough to ride wouldn't like it... and have a powerful stink.
"Would it...?"
"Maybe it's more interesting to common mortals like myself," says Hoge with an amused titter in her voice.
"So you want to ride a boar? Or a deer?"
"For the experience of it, at least. Or, actually, there's something I'd rather do with a deer. It seems like fun and I read about it on the internet."
"Oh? What's that," asks Chihiro, expecting something like Hoge visiting a deer petting zoo.
"Suplex!"
"Eh?!"
The pair keep up the conversation punctuated by long, comfortable silences up until the group Hoge mentioned starts to arrive. The first two come as an unbreakable set.
The head of a girl with red hair bobs above every member of the weekend crowd. Her red eyes, with thin slits for pupils, give sharp glares to everyone that gets too close. Her hair has been pulled into messy pigtails, and her sharply pointed ears have skull earrings danging from them. Even from a distance it's clear that she's talking loudly, probably belligerently, with someone else.
She spots the deer statue and calls out excitedly. Her expression instantly shifts from one of irritation to one of childlike excitement, her eyes almost disappearing under the size of her smile. Her talking grows faster, and she speeds up in pushing impolitely through the crowd in a direct line towards the meeting place.
She breaks through the crowd cover at the same moment the other girl with her becomes visible: a girl with the exact same face, except for the exceptional blueness of her own eyes and the straight blonde hair that cascades to her knees. Unlike her red-eyed sister, who is wearing a band t-shirt tucked into black pumpkin shorts, the blue-eyed girl is dressed in an elaborately pleated and ribboned doll lolita outfit of bright white and baby blues. A large blue bow also adorns her head.
It's immediately clear that the sisters are the same height, though the red-head is thinner. The reason one girl is a full head over everyone else in the plaza is because she is floating more than a meter off the ground - vestigial, red, leathery wings idly flap from her shoulders and an identically red, glossy spade-tail hangs down from behind her. She does a pirouette in the air and lets a fang peek out from her smirk.
"Aomi found it~! Aomi wins again at Find Hoge!"
"Did you?," teases the blonde. "I only saw you find the statue. You can't say you found Hoge-chan by knowing where she'd be, just because she's always early."
Hoge sneezes.
"Of course Aomi did!" The devil-girl swoops forward, causing some of the younger children to cry out and break into gouts of laughter, climbing over each other to race to the other side of the statue or hide behind their parents with grinning faces. She hovers directly overhead Hoge, who is barely shrouded in her quirk as it stands, and flings her arms out and down at an angle with her wings in high corners.
"Ta-da~! You can tell because she's the most overdressed one here, just like you, duuuuh!"
When the blonde golf-claps, her elaborately lacy purse bulges and shakes from within. She giggles at Aomi's antics, though with a much lower energy than her sister. "Okay, you win. It will take a lot for me to overcome the height advantage next time."
"Am I overdressed?" asks Hoge with a subtly worried look to Chihiro.
"I don't know much about these things," admits Chihiro in her many-layered costume. For some reason, there's a tingly feeling behind her forehead that started when the devil-girl flew into her aura.
"Of course!" "Not at all," assure the twins in unison.
Hoge pushes her glasses up her nose and they catch the sunlight. The lenses flash and hide her eyes. "Regardless." She begins to gesture around and make introductions.
"This is Mitsurugi Chihiro, the best martial artist in my class and probably the school."
"Oh, the famous sensei! You're why she won't go to shows with me!" Even though Aomi is smiling, her tail slithers like an agitated cat's.
"Forgive her. She's overexcited from all of these people. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mitsurugi," says the blue-eyed girl, with a shallow bow towards Chihiro.
"The flying one is Kamiyami Aomi," continues Hoge.
Aomi interrupts, "You can call me Aomi-chan, since I've heard so much about you, desu ne~! OR! Ao-hime if you really want to be friends, ufufufu."
Hoge makes a gesture in Aomi's direction like she's karate chopping the other girl's forehead, though there's a significant gap between the two. Aomi still makes a show of jerking with the 'force' of the 'blow' and rubbing her forehead while pouting.
Hoge continues through the pantomime. "And this is her twin sister, Kamiyami Rikae. They're both in 1-E across the hall, and powerful talents."
At this, Rikae curtsies perfectly. "Aomi frees up the surname for me to lower confusion. She's being thoughtful, in her own way."
'Twins can still be so different from each other,' reflects Chihiro silently. "Kamiyami? Is that spelled like Black Hair?"¹ asks Chihiro as her gaze goes from the audacious red hair of one girl to the brightly yellow locks of the other.
"I thought it was Illegal Paper at first," gossips Hoge at her side. This causes Rikae to giggle again.
"Not at all! It uses the characters for..." Aomi strikes a dramatic pose while hovering mid-air. "God and Evil!"
Without embarrassment or shame, Rikae gives Chihiro a beatific smile. "That's right."
Chihiro blinks rapidly several times. There's a lot to process there. "... ... ...Mine is Heavenly Sword," she adds lamely. She points far beyond the bounds of the park. "Our family has a long-standing dojo in Kyoto."
Hoge gently pushes Chihiro's arm with one finger so it points more accurately at the dojo's location.
"Nyoro is just nyoro," comments Nyoro Hoge even more lamely. Chihiro gives Hoge a side-glance and tucks her hands away in her sleeves.
"How do all of you know each other?"
"Photo Club," say Hoge and Rikae at the same time. Hoge goes on to add, "Rikae is interested in hero work for surveillance and intel, just like me. Although, her quirk is more versatile than that.
"And then I inevitably met black-orchid-blooming-in-darkness-Aomi-chan through getting closer to Blue-chan²," explains Hoge matter-of-factly.
Chihiro takes a moment.
"What was that you just said?"
"I said 'and then I inevitably met black-orchid-bloom--'"
"That's what I thought you said." Chihiro stops looking at Hoge and formally bows to the twins. "Nice to meet you."
Aomi, full of the joy that comes from successful mischief at Hoge's expense, grins from ear to ear. The setup for this moment happened many weeks ago, and the payoff is making her shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. She flaps her wings once to get just that little bit higher than a lanky young man who is warmly greeting a girl on a different part of the statue. Chihiro finds herself smiling back, just a little bit.
At that moment, two more people appear from the crowd, walking hand in hand. Actually, the crowd parts generously around them, with few people willing to get close. Even many of the individuals using the deer statues as a landmark start to shy to the other side of the statue or speed-walk away while typing swiftly on their devices.
One is a white-haired catgirl wearing wraparound sunshades. A trucker cap on her head has been modified to give her feline ears a full range of motion, and she's dressed lightly for the weather in a crop top, striped windbreaker, and leather shorts. Her colorful sneakers are quieting her stomping footfalls: her ears are flat and she's grimacing, face darting around at the crowd like she's daring them to do something.
Being pulled along behind the nekomimi is a tall girl with American features and lank black hair. Her blue-green skin has a subtle sheen to it, but even more striking than that are the variety of brown mushroom caps that sprout from different parts of her skull. She has a sleepy smile to her face, and her plodding gait still manages to stay just behind the girl leading her by the hand. The mushroom girl is dressed plainly, but perhaps more oddly than anyone. She's come to this meeting in loose linens, like those worn further west in mainland Asia. The long, billowy top seems to have shoulder pads, and sunburst-like patterns scattered across it in earth tones. Her gray flip-flops slap, slap, slap lazily across the cobbles.
They stop in the conversation circle made up by Hoge, Chihiro, and the Kamiyami twins. Chihiro is the only one that doesn't automatically greet them.
"Who's this?"
"Please forgive me, I thought you already knew them. This is Brooks Joan, an acquaintance of Orochi-chan, {Pleased to meet you again,}" introduces Hoge with an aside in thickly accented English.
"'Lo."
"And Fuhayai Koukoka was one of those selected for the Tournament."
The catgirl clicks her tongue with some annoyance at the reminder of that event. She holds her commentary in deference to how Hoge had also been a first-round elimination.
"You know so many people," mutters Chihiro with some surprise.
"It is more like I know of more and more people, at least related to Shiketsu. I watch and I listen. Brook-san, Fuhayai-san, this is Mitsurugi Chihiro, a genius with a sword and my dear friend."
Chihiro scratches her temple with some embarrassment at how Hoge talks her up in every introduction.
"It's Nyoro, right? You're the ghost of-" begins Koukoka with a sharp edge to her voice. She's interrupted when Joan firmly pulls down on her arm by their shared handhold. "...I mean, I've seen you around the Kamis."
Hoge's body language almost seems to glow with happiness. She even raises her eyebrows. "You noticed me?"
Koukoka flicks one of her ears and her tail gets a little poofier at the strange response. "Kind of... you're like a hole. Ouchouchouch! Stop that! I only meant that she stands out how she's the only teenager around that doesn't have a big stink and make loud noise all the time! It's a neko thing, I didn't mean anything by it!"
Hoge covers her cheeks with her hands and sways a little. "Wasuremono gets attention from nekos. This is already such a good day. I'm almost ready to go home right now." She flickers inconsistently between more blurry and normally visible as her emotions wrestle with each other. Rikae places a hand on Hoge's upper arm and also pats Hoge's elbow with some amusement.
"Try to hold on at least until we get inside."
A young boy saunters around the statue with overflowing dignity. "There you are, Joan," he says. He is clearly using the lowest part of his voice when he speaks, even though it's not that low objectively. Multiple of the girls speak with more bass.
"You're already here, Kaga?"
"Yes, I've been here a while. But don't worry about it. I had improper timing."
"Nyoro-san and Mitsurugi-san, this is our classmate Mirokazu Kaga. He is a karate practitioner that was also in the tournament."
"I remember," says Hoge, "He was only stopped by the combat-craziest of our class." With a formal half-bow and a small internal misunderstanding, she adds, "I'm happy to make the acquaintance of a prodigy, Mirokazu-kun."
Kaga puts a fist to his open palm and bows towards the two girls from 1-D. The motion is incongruous with his appearance. Not only is he the height of an underdeveloped middle-schooler, his face still has the babyfat of a young boy. His sharp-eyed glare is completely different from that appearance, like the steely gaze of a battle-hardened old man. To go to the amusement park with his classmates, he's wearing a precisely tailored baby blue three-piece suit with a white fedora. Both the band on his hat and his perfectly symmetrical necktie are bright red. Chihiro is struck with a sense of recognition that eludes exact placement. In any case, an expensive man's suit sized to a child's body would look out of place in any situation, but especially here at the amusement park Genki Galaxy.
Yet with all of that, what is most eye-catching to Hoge is how completely the now-blushing Koukoka's demeanor has changed. Her tail wraps around one of her legs, the tip flicking sporadically. Her body language has gone from aggressive tomboy to surprised and oddly demure.
"What's this about," Koukoka whispers too loudly to Joan.
"I invited him," replies Joan with an enigmatic smile... and at normal volume.
"Then why did you ask me to help you get around?" practically hisses Koukoka.
"Why indeed, Kouchan?" Joan stares straight ahead through her unblinking, clouded white eyes. "Everyone has now arrived. Let's get our tickets!"
Chihiro opens her eyes wide. How could she have forgotten about this part? She was so swept up with Hoge's energy that she had neglected that park tickets were... expensive! Several dinners worth, at least! Just as she starts to panic, she feels the hesitant, feather-light touch of Hoge's hand brush her shoulder. She looks up to see Hoge smiling smugly.
"Heheh... sounds like they didn't plan ahead properly. Eh, Chihiro-chan?" Hoge is showing her the screen of her smart-device, featuring a scannable code block and a label reading 'Genki Galaxy Entry Ticket (Pair Discount)' with today's date.
"A full access pass!" Hoge puffs out her chest with victorious pride. Then she leans down and whispers conspiratorially, "And don't worry about the price of anything inside. Just let me know and I'll get it for you. It's the least I could do to repay you, sensei."
Gratitude blooms in Chihiro's heart. "I will make sure my eyes remain smaller than my stomach," she promises.
Hoge firmly waves a hand to parry the words. "Don't concern yourself. If anything bad happens, I'll make my boyfriend buy me meals." With this bold declaration, it is like her head inflates three sizes and threatens to carry her away. Hoge nearly bounds with light footsteps after the rest of the group, and Chihiro shakes her head. Still, the corners of her mouth momentarily flick up.
Which reminds Chihiro of something. Now that the new kids are outpacing her and Hoge, Chihiro notices that the tingling in her head is gone. Something in her mood has subtly changed, as well. Her brow furrows slightly and she pulls on Hoge's blouse to get her attention.
"I believe I understand what the others are capable of, but I need to check something. What is it that the Kamiyami sisters can do? There might be an interaction occurring."
Hoge gives this deep thought. Chihiro can tell by the shimmer of dullness across the girl, as well as the more conventional way of watching how she stares ahead at nothing at all. Finally making some internal decision, Hoge replies.
"They're very specific forms of esper. Rikae-chan animates dolls with her mind and Aomi-chan has an... an aura she can't turn off, like Wasuremono. It is my understanding that hers gets thinned out the more people are around her. It makes people like her. It's a charm aura."
Chihiro processes that carefully. Technically, it is a blunt version of mind control. But it was something outside of her will. If anyone could understand some of that burden, it would be one of the two of them. Chihiro had learned to control her aura's intensity and the effects it had on others. Hoge affected others only in the most passive, indirect ways, but her control over it was equally indirect and convoluted. Their quirks were curses they were trying to make into blessings for other people. From the way Hoge was talking about this friend of hers, Chihiro got the sense it was very similar to how Aomi felt about her own ability.
"Is that why she acts so...?"
"Mm. I think it's a way she's trying to make it so people still like her even when she's not around. It must be lonely. She has to live her life somehow while always within a cloud of doubt. It would be impossible for her to know subjectively if anyone genuinely wanted her around or if it was Kawaiiccubi making them be friendly."
Chihiro grimaces openly at the quirk's name. "Kawaiiccubi?"
Hoge nods sympathetically. "I know. Who says something like that about a little kid? Doctors should be better regulated in what they call these things when they manifest. It can get people maligned unfairly for life." Her thoughts drift towards a certain three-eyed hunk classmate.
Chihiro, bearer of the quirk Life Taker, stays lost in thought for the whole time the group navigate the queue through the entrance gate.
The seven Shiketsu students huddle around one of the map stands that Genki Galaxy provides its guests. Though space on the walking paths was always at a premium, the crowds seemed to prefer walking pressed up to each other rather than get too close to the collection of mutants - or maybe just one fungal mutant in particular.
In her left hand, Hoge holds a cone of purple cotton candy (which Aomi sneakily pinches bites of from the top); in her right hand, she holds a black dry-erase marker, with which she is drawing out an evolving plan for everyone to efficiently see as many attractions as interest them. Circles, arrows, blocked paths, and estimated times increasingly cover the plastic cover of the map display as everyone chimes in. Even Chihiro, surrounded by relative strangers, pulls her eyes away from the drawing of a giant Ferris wheel to offer a suggestion or two. Koukoka, somewhat begrudgingly, is describing the attractions and layout of the park to Joan.
Kaga points up at one part of the map from below.
"For my own reasons, I want to visit the boardwalk arcade as late in the day as we can. If there are prizes to be earned, I should make sure to be at peak performance!"
"That should be fine. I have no interest in those games, as it is well known most of them are designed fraudulently. Probably I will leave by then," says Hoge.
"Hoge-chaaaan~! Don't plan to leave before we even have any fun!"
"Wh-when else should I plan it? I don't have the same stamina as the rest of you."
"Ifz nod abowd stamima," responds Aomi around stolen spun sugar.
"Ah- Hey! Kamiyami Aomi, I would have shared if you'd asked!"
"It's not about asking, either~," Aomi snickers.
Rikae rocks from heel to toe and smiles, "Oh, full name that time. Be careful, little sister."³
Hoge narrows her eyes at the teasing. In an act of vengeance, she forces the whole mass of dissolving candy into her cheeks as fast as she can. Even though her eyes tear up from the ticklish feeling at the top of her throat, she glares with challenge at Aomi, who is struggling not to laugh and break her exaggerated full-body performance of cutesy innocence.
"We can take this plan as a guideline, but a leisurely pace is fun too. Whatever happens will happen," says Joan. Her voice is as serene and level as a windless lake.
Hoge glances around at the other students and, seeing their expressions, silently acquiesces to this. She loses a little bit of color compared to the surroundings - a Wasuremono version of an embarrassed blush - then rips the barren cone into a flat paper spiral and uses it to wipe off the marker from the map.
Swiftly, Hoge replaces the cap back on her marker, tucks it and the unwound cone into her satchel bag, and adjusts her hat to calm herself. "The line to the Gravi-whirler will be fast," she says, and everyone walks away.
Whoom! Whoom! Whoom!
Among a dozen other people, the kids are spun at high speed in a sealed spherical room. Centripetal force causes them to cling to the concave walls of the structure and defy the gravity of the Earth. In moments, none of the occupants in the high-tech room feel the inertia any longer and restraints retract themselves automatically. Wall projections of virtual scenery cast the illusion of a deep space vessel to everyone inside - many members of the crowd exclaim wordlessly in their amazement. Hoge frowns as an unpleasant memory that is not truly her own surfaces once again.
Chihiro crouches down on the wall-floor and examines the simulated view. By getting close and swaying side to side, she can break the perspective, and see the vectors contort. 'So this is what amusement parks are like?' is what she thinks to herself. The very picture of an unflappable maiden, Chihiro wanders among the crowd of more visibly excited strangers while headed towards a virtual porthole into space.
Hoge is one of the first to run to what was once the ceiling, and the first to reach its crown. Unlike most, however, she does not stop, and ends up on the opposite side of the rotation from where she started, causing some office ladies to shout and laugh in surprise when she appears over their heads. The ninja from 1-D goes into a staggered stance so she can bow an apology to them without falling over. This only serves to confuse her inner ear more, and the bow turns into a tumble that requires her to grab into onto one of the restraints so she can match again with the inertia of the ride. The people surrounding Hoge swiftly become distracted by each other or by activity elsewhere in the sphere. Hoge carefully buries her curiosity - better not try jumping.
Kaga holds the brim of his fedora in his teeth and does push-ups on the shifting gravity, which then become a handstand, and push-ins from this position. Kouchan watches him with wide pupils. Her tail sways from side to side, and her leg muscles tense and twitch as her instincts tell her alternately to pounce on the repetitive motion, and that leaping right now would be dangerous. Joan taps her chin with one hand and her eyes closed. She hasn't moved from her initial position, though her oily hair is slapped across her face. The twins are holding each others hands and are trapped in a laughing fit. Nothing could be funnier to either at this moment than that the other can't stop.
All around them, the crowd laughs and shrieks, clings and cavorts, plays it safe and puts themselves in danger. There's quite a few gawkers at the virtual windows that show fictional exoplanets and dense star fields free of atmospheric distortion and urban light pollution. Sooner than most would like, red safety lights slowly pulse, the walls buzz with a warning tone, and the places at the restraints become brightly illuminated. There's a scramble for the spots as the rotation gradually lessens, until natural gravity overcomes everything and the floor reasserts its identity. The ride stops. Blank walls and a descending door signal the return of the mundane world.
At the peak of the structure, a lone four year old sucks his thumb and looks around at everyone else in confusion. He stands firmly on the ceiling by himself with his bowl cut dangling stubbornly towards the ground.
The group takes up most of the seating to a boat-shaped pendulum ride. The whole structure scythes ominously through the air, making the occupants rise from their seats slightly at the apex of the swing, before crashing them backwards into the reverse arc. Due to the lack of restraints, momentum alone keeps the riders from being catapulted away. Screams rise unbidden from nearly everyone, some from gleeful faces and others from genuinely scared ones.
Every time the boat changes direction at the top of its swing, a nearly invisible breeze of tiny spores trails up towards the clouds from Joan's head - as well as the colorful spots of her tunic. Koukoka, meanwhile, clings yowling and wide-eyed to her seatmate Kaga. With a firmly set clench of his jaw, and an intense fiery glare into the middle distance, he stubbornly refuses to let any sound leak out of his mouth. He crosses his arms defiantly even as Koukoka squishes his hat to the side in her open panic. All of her hair across her whole body stands on end.
Aomi is one of the gleeful shouters. Her hands are raised up high above her head and she laughs in between her yells, which the middle-aged man seated next to her (wearing an alien eyestalk cap souvenir himself) is good-naturedly copying. Behind them, Rikae is smiling nervously and laughing, but even still is hiding her face in Hoge's shoulder. Both girls are kicking and stomping their feet in their nervousness during the ride, but desaturated Hoge also flickers like a visual glitch in space. Her mouth traces words of surprise ("Wow! Good gracious! Scary!"⁴) but naturally she can't be heard over the rest of the noise. Otherwise, her expression is relatively calm, except for the rapid blinking at every down-swing.
Chihiro sits in the middle of a seat by herself and sensibly closes her eyes against the wind when the ride swings forward and blows her hair back, but calmly observes the other riders and their reactions when the boat swings in reverse. When the ride eventually comes to a stop, she waits for her sense of balance and the strength in her legs to return before she stands up, adjusts her kimono, and walks to meet everyone else. Hoge gets her own hat and her bags back from the operator's storage cubbies and talks to Chihiro while putting everything back on.
"I didn't get to see your reactions, so that doesn't count for my goals today. I'm not giving up yet. What did you think?"
"It was fine. While I was there I thought about birds."
"Birds?"
"Yes. The ride wasn't eventful, so my mind wandered. I started thinking if there were enough places to live in the forest now for all the birds or if many of them had to fly away before winter comes."
"Oh... I'll have to do better to distract you, then. Put that aside for now, Chihiro-chan. Today is about people and experiences. Let's build more bridges together! Ganbatte!"
"Right. Ganbatte."
The seven Shiketsu students move together through the wreckage of a derelict deep-space freighter. Most of the halls and other routes off of their winding pathway are firmly sealed by debris, sealed safety doors, or hastily applied steel barriers covered with yellow warning stripes. In their careful advance, showers of sparks sometimes fall from bundles of wires or broken lights; the sounds of skittering things echo out from the gloom, scraping their many claws noisily on the decking; machinery thunks and whines from behind obstacles. Hissing steam and corrupted audio from recessed speakers keep the kids on edge. They never get a single moment to become used to the rhythm, never find sufficient time or space for respite. Every moment is balanced on the edge of a knife.
It has been a gauntlet just to get this far. Kaga is at the point position. He's tilted his hat back to give himself the least obstructed view of the surroundings, which exposes some of the reddish fuzz of his close-cropped hair. His sharp eyes check the origin of every sound the instant after they form. His gait is tense, slow, consciously moved. His muscles are coiled tightly and ready to explode in every direction, and his face is a mask of serious resolve.
Joan comes next through the thin air of the ruined spaceship. Her footsteps are shuffling and heavy across the ground. Thankfully, this path is free of loose litter that could cause her to slip or trip, as long as she stays away from the walls themselves. When sparks crackle or the group creeps out of emergency lighting and into a well-lit stretch of corridor then she snaps her head towards the brightness. Her near-total blindness still allows her to see sharp contrasts like this, much like ancient creatures or deep-sea life. And the atmosphere has her as much on edge as the rest of her classmates. The scents of ozone, stale oils, stagnant air, body smells assault her. Every sound seems amplified deafeningly. Both of her hands clench onto the arm of her seeing-eye catgirl and she clings close with every step. Her skin seems to shine even more, probably from a fresh coating of nervous sweat.
Koukoka has her shades off in this relative dimness outside of bright sunlight. They sit on the brim of her cap, which means everyone around can see the fear in her wide, pink eyes. Her feline pupils are nearly round in her nervousness; they swallow every scrap of light they can so as to give the girl an edge. It's clear that Kouchan is leaning emotionally on Joan as much as Joan is physically leaning on her. She is making a show of bravery that does not completely cover up her anxiety. She, too, is coiled. Ready to explode into action. But even Koukoka herself doesn't know if it's to go on the attack or to reposition for cover and ambush. She tries to walk with one leg forward, partly crouched in a martial stance, with Joan hanging off one side and a bit behind.
Aomi floats near the ceiling with her hands tucked up by her chin and her elbows guarding her body. With every skitter of unseen creatures through duct-work or shadows passing broken gaps in the walls, she gives a strangled gasp and kicks or sweeps off into a new direction. Once, when she bumbles into a shower of sparks, she lets out a sobbing squeal of "Atchachacha!" and lands for the first time all day to hide behind her sister. This only lasts a minute or two, fists full of cotton and lace, before the group rounds a corner and she takes to the sky again. When this happens, Rikae distractedly lets the fingertips of her left hand slide down Aomi's fleeing spade-tail: a silent farewell between the scared twins.
Rikae has split her attention in this tense environment. Her nearly-empty shoulder bag hangs limply at her side. Four cloth dolls with patch eyes, features made of ribbon and button and bead, are on constant movement around the group to cover blind spots and check corners before even Kaga has to turn them. They sneak and lean, run and climb, moving like black operative soldiers deep in enemy territory -- because as far as Rikae is concerned, they are. Their small cloth bodies make their stealth actions even more silent. Only the inhuman shadows they cast from the occasional light fixture truly give them away.
Whenever one of the dolls get close to Rikae in their chaotic patrol at the groups' corners, the doll leaps straight from the floor to their mistress' shoulder, and lean in with a guarding hand and unmoving mouths to whisper intel into her ear. She directs this crazy pantomime and takes on all this news with the half of her brain not overwhelmed with the spectacle of the ship and its catastrophic damage. When the group gets into a section of the freighter with alien slime and blackened blood oozing down the walls and puddling into floor grates, Rikae pulls her skirts tightly around herself and shudders.
And far back, keeping line of sight (for the most part) and keeping their ongoing conversation as quiet as they can, are Hoge and Chihiro. Hoge's measured footsteps are oddly loud for her. Her wooden geta tap as percussively on the metal flooring as anybody, as she's foregoing even her practiced habits of weasel-stepping and other ninja tricks for silent movement. Wasuremono is nearly completely off. It rests in its passive state. This has made it easy to have a whispered exchange with Chihiro, who is displaying a polite interest in her surroundings as if strolling through a park. The kimono she wears helps with keeping her stride calm and short. Every so often, one girl will point at something for the other to observe, and they'll mutter between each other.
The group of seven students go past a laboratory that clearly became a site of untold violence, from what little can be made out in the darkness within. A dissection table has been flipped onto its side, spilling a trail of mangled, glistening meat made purple-black by the shadows. Medical implements have been shattered and strewn about the floor, bullet holes scatter across the walls, and a spiderweb crack on the observation window clings to the thin lines of metal wire reinforcing the glass. What might be a human head twirls upside-down in near-complete darkness from a springy string of something unidentifiable that hangs from a caved-in ceiling panel. Right beside it, a housing for fluorescent lights is crumpled without dignity on the ground, trailing by a single intact wire, with glass and toxic powders exploded out from it like entrails on a battlefield.
An alien creature like a muscular jellyfish with serrated fangs in its lamprey mouth jets from the darkness! It slams against the window! Clicking and screeching, the teeth scrape horribly in the spiderweb fracture, which flexes with the blow! Five screams rise up from five throats as Kaga jumps in front of the girls with his arms spread up and out. Rikae spins on one foot to take cover behind three of her dolls, which pyramid up like cheerleaders, and the last leaps into Aomi's arms to be held tight against her chest. The devil-girl flies on her back, eyes closed against the horror, legs kicking like a sleeper in nightmare. Koukoka tries to lunge forward with fangs bared and eyes terrified, her hackles rising, a hand ready to swipe, but is foiled from effective movement by Joan yelling and trying to jump into her friend's arms. A fat buttoncap mushroom blooms up from the slime just beside the window and balloons into a ridiculous size, then bends itself perfectly to jam the peak of the cap up against the weakpoint of the window and squish dryly against the glass, bracing it against the monstrosity on the other side.
The alien uses its many thorny tentacles to climb up out of sight and pull itself noisily into the duct-works. A grated panel slams itself shut sight unseen above the window, the exact duplicate of so many others on their walk.
"A blade could have pierced through on the flex, of course," whispers Hoge to Chihiro, the way one might commentate over a golf broadcast.
"Kasumi no kamae,"⁵ quietly affirms Chihiro. She raises her hands to said thrusting grip beside her right temple. "Use the downward curve to move with the arc of your left arm and keep your force."
"Yes, exactly my imagining. Even a tanto could have gotten through and wounded the puppet."
"They have good sculptors at this park."
"I agree. But the fake blood seems like a liability issue. What if someone slips and is injured on the metal ground? And in space you would want more curves on everything. I haven't seen guide straps anywhere, either. It's all a bit too unbelievable."
"You speak with such authority."
"Well, I won't go into that story again. It's enough that Ini knows."
The pair of girls walk into the passageway the other group advanced into, following more startled screams and nervous laughter. Beside them, the giant mushroom withers into a desiccated lump and collapses into dust and spores. This gets into the slime elsewhere, or is sucked up by the ventilation to disappear into another part of the facility. Tiny lines of rhizome slither in the gloam. Hoge and Chihiro catch up to Aomi, Rikae, Koukoka, Joan, and Kaga in an anonymous passageway of floor-to-ceiling pods, some reflectively bubbling and others fogged over with frost and holding vague, rigid human forms within.
Whenever anyone passes by a bubbling vat, their reflection contorts into strange proportions, expanding that body part and truncating another, making even this collection of mutants look more strange and distorted. Most of the kids take a moment to watch the effect and pose themselves humorously, trying to shake off the gauntlet of costumed actors and expensive animatronics that had kept them on edge.
Koukoka is focused on a pained silhouette behind frosted glass, flicking her tail in nervous agitation even as her face calms, when she turns away and catches sight of another inhuman monstrosity of white fur and black claws and freakishly long limbs from the corner of her eye. She leaps away with a sharp inhale followed by a loud cough, her tail floofing to maximum size, her hair standing on end, her claws sharpening in the dark and glinting in the lights. She almost jumps right into Hoge and barely misses her face.
Hoge screams suddenly, Wasuremono flairs, and the volume dies from a rising, piercing pitch to a quiet downsweep into low silence, like someone falling past a cliff at terminal velocity. She buzzes at the edges, blurring out, face disappearing into static and fuzz, and she stumbles back on silent tripping feet to fall stutter-step animation reel onto her butt. Chihiro hides her giggling in the crook of her elbow and manages to stop just before Hoge fades all the way back into view. Hoge pouts and rubs her tailbone. Chihiro helps her to her feet. Koukoka tries to play it cool and pretend nothing unintentional happened, but keeps stealing glances to make sure Hoge is unhurt.
Hoge sighs, "And I almost made it through the whole haunted house."
Chihiro pinches Hoge's sleeve as the group walks through the park. The corners of her mouth briefly upturn as she looks at one of the rides through a gap in the crowd. "Look. There's your chance."
The other class stops to look back as the sound of Hoge's trotting comes to an end. Hoge herself follows Chihiro's gaze, and though her face remains still, her cheeks color a little more pink. Chihiro has directed her attention towards a Merry-Go-Round.
At this distance, its characteristic song is covered by the incidental sounds of the parkgoers. Still, a carousel of lights twirls in the distance, small figures riding animal statues up and down as the ride turns gently around and around. It is the kind of ride for small children, or much older people nostalgic for times they never experienced. It's not even entirely on theme for the park itself. The kids from 1-E circle the pair of girls from 1-D so they can look in the same direction and understand why they are being diverted from Hoge's unsubtle insistence on optimal park routing. Seeing the Merry-Go-Round for themselves does nothing to explain this.
"It's not the same," replies Hoge, looking up at a passing cloud.
"Ganbatte," says Chihiro back. She has pronounced it with hidden meaning.
Kaga puts up a fist and furrows his eyebrows. "GANBATTE!" Even without knowing the context, he knows the proper time for encouragement: always, and forever.
"{Fightiiing~!}" adds in Aomi, starfishing gleefully above their heads. This prompts some giggling from other girls, though Koukoka bites her lips from the inside in an attempt to disguise this.
Hoge pulls down on the brim of her hat to hide her face from the others. She shimmers at the edges.
"Do, it! Do, it! Do, it!" start chanting the twins together, not needing to know what they're pushing Hoge to do as long as it stays fun to do so.
"We have the time, Nyoro-san. Whatever happens will happen, right?" Joan adds in with her sleepy voice. But her cloudy eyes have a twinkle.
Hoge pushes her hat back a little too roughly, pulls a pad of paper and her marker out of her bag again, and quickly writes two bold characters on the top page.
よし⁶
The kids from 1-E break into a cheer.
A few minutes later, they're whispering to each other from their place in line behind the pair from 1-D. Koukoka and Joan, Aomi and Kaga, Rikae and her dolls are all conversing together in an attempt to figure out why Chihiro wanted Hoge to ride on a carousel. Further up, Hoge is shuffling her feet around while she tries to do the same thing. No matter where she places her weight, her balance on the geta feels as unstable as her emotional state.
'Am I being teased? Chi-chan is not someone who has been cruel to me. I have witnessed several events that indicate she may hold me as important a friend as I believe she is to me; our relationship is approximately reciprocal.' Hoge glances quickly to the side, hopefully too fast for Chihiro to notice. The shorter girl is looking straight ahead: her eyes are watching the families go on to the Merry-Go-Round with bright and smiling faces. Although Chihiro's face is itself decidedly neutral, Hoge is sure that this level of focus at the very least means there is something important about this moment to her friend.
Hoge crosses her hands behind her back and follows Chihiro's gaze. She notices two things primarily: the first is that Chihiro seems to be most watchful of a young family - one mother, one father, one black-haired little girl (who hops up and down and squeals in delight as the animals circle passed her) - and the second is that the operator for this ride is the same woman that took their entry tickets.
Either one could be in Chihiro's sightline, but neither are particularly odd. Merry-Go-Rounds, in Hoge's understanding, are mostly for small children and lovers on dates, so the young family is expected. In fact, flicking her eyes around the scene in front of her, Hoge notices several other families that will be on the next ride of the carousel. As the ride in question comes to a stop and the attendant directs the current group away, Hoge sees yet more families of all different sizes coalescing together in order to explore other regions of the park. So did Chihiro recognize that trio in some way? Or was she actually looking elsewhere?
That causes Hoge to reconsider the attendant herself. Yet, try as she might, Hoge can't discern why that woman would be of special interest either. It is not unusual for workers to be directed to different tasks over their shifts. It keeps them from making as many mistakes due to complacency. Someone as considerate and hard-working as Chihiro would know this as well. Looking between Chihiro and the woman, Hoge would be surprised to learn they were close relatives either, so that level of focus is hard to immediately explain. As best as she can figure, Hoge needs more information.
But she's still a little embarrassed about being urged by her friends and acquaintances to go on a kiddie ride. She doesn't trust her voice to come out clearly through the contextual obstacle of her quirk Wasuremono. Only her beloved Inigo has put in the wonderful effort to understand her when her nerves have her muted. That being the case, Hoge can't just ask Chihiro what's on her mind, and can't think of a proper way to broach the subject regardless. Which leaves her with no distraction from what Chihiro might be trying to communicate by encouraging her to come here.
Hoge isn't stupid. She knows it's related to earlier. 'There's sprinting monkeys, running dogs, ponies, a sliding penguin, leaping deer, and several other mounts for the carousel. Chi-chan is using riding deer and boar as a referent, clearly. And she would know full well I am not capable of performing a toss of any kind on these beasts, as they are bolted to the greater machine. As my martial arts teacher, Chihiro is aware of my physical limitations. So riding deer is the cover, at minimum, as evidenced by our exchange of comments just previous to entering the queue.'
Hoge closes her eyes to minimize distractions, and leaves only part of her mind to monitor the ambient sounds of the crowd that will tell her when to step forward in line. The rest of her mind is on this thorny social puzzle. She brings her feet together and leans just-so in order to make her posture a solved problem, as well. 'If Chi-chan is using a rhetorical cover, then she has a hidden meaning; if the hidden meaning is malicious, there would have been more signs, so the probability of it being ill-intentioned are low; if the hidden meaning is instructive, then there is no rush to divine it and it will become obvious in time and is therefore not worth current effort to understand it; if the hidden meaning is mischievous, then it could be either a way to increase our bond or an excuse to test our bond. In this last case, I must respond appropriately.
'Let us say that it is indeed a jape or a prank of some sort. If it is, then the point of the humor as well as its punchline are lost on me. I know from previous analysis that teasing is sometimes done to bring friends closer together instead of to insult the receiving party. It is proof that there is patience and vulnerability between the two parties, like a cat rolling over to expose its tummy. In this scenario, I would not have to understand the humor, I would just have to not take it in insult, and the social encounter would have been won cooperatively and our bond would increase.'
Hoge uncrosses her hands behind her and crosses her arms in front of her, nodding slightly to herself. 'In addition, if there is some secret derision, some minor revenge occurring for Chihiro's benefit, then by not taking insult I de-escalate the situation and allow my friend to reduce her stress. Or if it is truly the case that Chihiro feels genuine malice towards me and this is part of a sociopolitical play between peers, then my best path to victory is to deny her the satisfaction of seeing me in distress! Indeed, even in this remote possibility, the ideal response is clear: I must play along and enjoy myself on this Merry-Go-Round attraction!' Hoge snaps open her eyelids, the fires of triumph and determination glowing deep within her dark eyes. 'In order to keep my friendship with Chi-chan, I will show her I am having fun on the carousel!'
Behind the silent pair of girls, 1-E winds down their discussion with no definite theories.
Kaga squares his shoulders and wonders aloud to his classmates. "They show patience and poise, even with this. Look at how quiet and calm they are. Is this the true difference between our class and theirs? Is this why things have turned out so differently for 1-D, even though we are all in the same program?"
Koukoka is the only one to reply. "Kaga-kun, isn't it more like they're crazy?"
Chihiro keeps her own counsel as she stands thoughtfully at the front of the line. Around and around goes the carousel, singing an old-timey song. The young family laughs together as their daughter clutches on to her sculpted horse in wide-eyed wonder. The orphaned Chihiro is starting to feel sick to her stomach. Happy family memories come up unbidden, but each is tainted by the undercurrent of her grief.
In part to distract herself, she tears her eyes away from the scene in front of her, and looks at the people behind her. Her student and friend, Hoge. Relative strangers come next, though they are peers that do not dismiss or avoid her, and that is its own small blessing. And beyond them, a handful of people. Just faces. All of them too wrapped up in their own lives to pay her any mind.
'How strange that being ignored can feel like a luxury,' she thinks. Hoge gives Chihiro what she clearly believes to be a "normal" smile. The precision and fakeness of it forms a little bubble of amusement inside Chihiro, which almost rises into her throat as a laugh. The corners of Chihiro's mouth twitch upward. Her eyes shine. She turns back again as the Merry-Go-Round's song plays its last notes. She doesn't cry.
"Please wait for all our guests to leave the ride. I will then be able to open the gate. Thank you for visiting and having fun with us today!" Seconds later, the way is cleared, and everyone finds a mount.
Chihiro goes for the creature directly in front of her, which turns out to be many-tentacled space alien with a round bubble helmet -- the only one of its kind in the menagerie. She sits side-saddle upon it and hooks a hand into a loop of tendril. Predictably, Hoge finds a stag and sits on its back with a clutch of antler in each fist. Joan is led to a frog by Koukoka, who uncaringly sits in a saddle on a river fish beside her. Kaga refuses the assistance of a well-meaning stranger as he climbs onto the back of a shiba inu dog sculpted mid-sprint. Aomi is politely warned by the attendant that she has to be completely seated on her cat mount before the ride can begin, yet nothing is said about Rikae and her dolls which have each claimed various animals around her. Even when the rest of the waiting queue files on, there are spare seats on the ride.
Without anyone headed this way, the happy-faced professional operating the attraction decides to close up the gate and start up the carousel. A nostalgic carnival tune begins playing from above the heads of the riders. Lights twinkle. The animals slowly rise and fall as the entire structure spins and gambols.
It doesn't take long for Hoge to become bored. On the first pass by the attendant, she brings her powers of observation to bear on the control board. Noticing the lack of a speed control and the lack of acceleration, she assumes that it will get no more exciting than this. It is certainly nothing like what she imagined riding a deer would be like, except that there are convenient handholds. A plan - no, more accurately, a scheme - forms as she passes to the back of the circuit and takes note of the lack of sightlines to the woman at the control board as well as the lack of surveillance. Her heart beats faster at the risk of mischief. Her pupils dilate. Her hair rises at the back of her neck. Chihiro glances over. Wasuremono flares and Hoge becomes more visually muted and indistinct.
Chihiro watches owlishly as the gray smear of Nyoro Hoge smoothly gets into a crouch on the deer's back. The carousel sings its way back towards the blind angle, and in that brief span of time, Hoge vaults over the antlers and makes a silent leap onto an empty-saddled beast. From the attendant's perspective, the carousel spins, and when it comes back around, her sight is drawn to chatting friends, cheerful families, and a crowd-watching girl with black hair and red eyes.
Hoge climbs the smooth spiraling pole through the giant fruit bat she has as her most recent mount. She needs the extra elevation to lean out and shove away, catching herself on the pole held by a bubble-gum pink teenager with curly forehead horns riding a sparrow. Hoge lets the catch spin her in a new direction, and uses the momentum and a kick out and reach the empty seat of the first of a line of monkeys. She sits backwards on it, smiling in her haze, as she waits for her next chance.
1-E is for the most part talking with their neighbors. Kaga is focused on using his core muscles to stay perfectly upright in his seat. But Koukoka is distracted by something else entirely. Her eyebrows are furrowed the way someone bothered by the buzzing of an unseen fly might show their irritation and confusion. Her ears twitch and rotate. She is distracted not by a sound, but by the shifting hollow in the soundscape; a place where the noise of the ride and its crowd warps and deadens.
The carousel spins to its blind spot. Hoge's leg muscles tense. Her smile widens in anticipation. At just the right moment, she jumps backwards from her monkey perch onto the next primate in sequence. She lands, rolls from its head to the base of its tail, springs out to the next prancing monkey, kicks off that one's skull and the spinning inner wall of the carousel, and catches the pole of the last one to twirl down to the seat. She laughs aloud and the sound quiets in her mouth to be drowned in the music. Her pace was perfectly synchronized with the speed of the machine; she extended her time in the blindspot until she ran out of room. Around she goes again.
It doesn't take too many more turns for the song to end and the ride to slow to a stop. Each time around, an unnoticed Hoge improvised a path between sculpted animals. She breathes slowly and shivers with the last dregs of adrenaline and giggling. Kouchan whips her head over, blinking rapidly behind her shades, as Hoge fades back into full color and only a slight blur to her edges. She's seated on a dragonfly wearing a flight helmet nearby.
"There you are!," is all she can manage, and it sounds strange even to her own (feline) ears.
Hoge bites her lips and holds a finger in front of her mouth. The attendant, apparently oblivious, gives her routine speech to the people who arrived during the short ride. Everyone leaves their seats and exits from another part of the fencing, then different groups collect in the thoroughfare on the other side.
"Did you enjoy yourself?" asks Chihiro to Hoge when the students meet up again.
"Eventually," confirms Hoge in turn. "Though riding deer is better in the imagination."
Hoge cocks her head and looks up and to the side. "I think we should prioritize eating. I remember that there is a food court nearby."
The other kids exchange several looks. They leave with more questions than answers.
The students clump together as they look up at the source of a looming shadow. Hoge and Chihiro stand in the middle of the crescent, with the 1-E kids curving around behind them. Hoge has her fists on her hips and her head cocked thoughtfully to the side. Her squinted eyes flit around, taking in disparate details, her brain racing to make connections and conjectures. Chihiro simply stares up with her hair falling back and exposing her whole round face. Her open red eyes drink in the entire scene above the kids at once. Like always, her body is poised for motion. The other kids run the gamut between these two extremes, though none of them are disinterested. Because the thing casting the shadow that covers them all is the famous kaiju that rampaged through Japan more than fifty years ago.
The titanic chimera that required all of the top Heroes of the time to team up with military forces is bursting out from the ground. Talons the size of soldiers have gouged deep lines into the concrete, fighting for purchase to drag the ancient radioactive monstrosity from its tunnel. The shape of it is a conglomeration, a thing that has never existed together as any other being of this world. Narrow like a serpent, with the limbs and face of a wolf, yet covered with reptilian scales and boils instead of hair. From the top of its head and down its powerful neck, cascading from its back and sides, a great many tentacles writhe. Across every fleshy tentacle, pneumatic spines glisten with threatening toxins. Eyes - massive, round, yellow, the shape of a predatory dinosaur's but expanded several times over - pierce malice and madness down towards the crowd of park-goers on the path from which it emerges.
A jaw like a train tunnel splits its face, a face with a bestial expression of joy and rage. Curved fangs, serrated like crabeater seal teeth, fill not just one row but dozens that cascade across the roof of its great mouth and into the throat that shines forth with light and noise. The nightmare beast, a hated thing so feared in another time that it was called the Harbinger of the End, has yet to fully emerge. A ramp of concrete flattens its spiny tongue and flows down its throat. The group of prospective students look upon the giant monster with calm analysis and a measure of respect for not only its power but for the many who struggled and even died to defeat it in the end.
"Aomi thinks it is somewhat strange to make a monument like this," says the devil-girl.
"A bit tasteless if you think about it too hard, yes. But a good likeness," responds her sister in blue.
Various heads nod. The park has clearly gone to great effort to maintain the life-sized sculpture against the weather on the seaside, the wear of the crowds, and assumedly a few incidents of vandalism done against the display. It is a surprising sight but oddly not a frightening one, probably because it is not moving. And that it's clearly made of artificial materials like concrete and ceramics.
"I expect we won't have to go up against anything like this in our lives," Hoge says with more hope than conviction.
She knows that she would never be able to combat such a mythological beast as the Harbinger, but her mind floods with possibilities for how she could help support those who have better chances. Even if she were to die, that is the deal made for Heroism. She looks down from the kaiju's massive teeth to read the marble display with dozens of carved names. It is unlit and surrounded by decorative plants, so that it does not impose itself on the view of visitors who are not specifically looking for it.
After all, the park management does not want to put off anyone's appetite. The kids advance into the beast's mouth and down the ramp into the well-lit food court filled with ambient music and the lively sounds of a chattering crowd. All around are decorated counters with backlit signs showing their menus by simply putting prices next to photographs of meals. The clatter and hiss of working kitchens comes from the subterranean spaces behind the counters, but seated at high stools behind each one are smiling maidens beside sleek, minimalist registers.
From their elevated position on the ramp, the kids look at their options and discuss among themselves. Koukoka jerks forward like she's going to run directly towards a counter that simply says 'TEXMEATS' above it, but the weight of Joan on her arm makes her halt her own movement. With an embarrassed clearing of her throat, she plays off the moment by pointedly ignoring it and politely reads the signs off for Joan and lets her pick. Kaga stands beside both girls with his arms crossed, eyes closed, fedora tipped forward to create a moody shadow across the top of his face.
Other signs read things like 'STIRFRY' or 'UDON' or 'CAFE' above them. The one unimaginatively called 'DESSERTS' was quickly visited by the Kamiyami twins. Hoge looked from one to another indecisively, while Chihiro waited patiently for her to make a decision. After all, it would be Hoge paying for both meals. But Hoge was not comparing the quality of the stands or the appropriateness of the meals to the situation (since obviously, the truly appropriate choice of eating sushi inside a seamonster was not available) but instead looking at two of the women at different counters.
"Chihiro," Hoge began, making the shorter girl prick up her ears at the lack of honorifics. "I believe I've spotted a mystery."
Chihiro brings her eyebrows a little closer together. "What do you mean?"
In response, Hoge lifts both hands to point directly at the ladies: they were entirely identical in every way, though they were the only two people in the whole building who could be described that way. Even Hoge's friends, the Kamiyami twins from 1-E, were not so perfectly the same.
Chihiro responds carefully, with a neutral tone. "Identical twins are not unheard of."
"Identical twins do not have the same name," says Hoge, pushing up her glasses with one fingertip.
Chihiro blinks rapidly. That wasn't even something she was sure she could read from all the way across a crowded food court, and Chihiro had training on keeping her senses open. She walks towards the CAFE stand to confirm Hoge's claim. Hoge keeps pace, and continues her conspiratorial whispering to Chihiro.
"It seems you have not taken notice of other times we have seen these women, either. She took our tickets at the front gate, and was the attendant at the carousel. While it might have been possible the first two times that it was one individual, now she is in two places at once within our sightline. There's very few plausible explanations, and most of those are down to Quirks."
"If it is Quirk related, why are you concerned?"
"Curiosity, maybe. Do you not simply want to know the answer, for the satisfaction of knowing it?"
Chihiro hums noncommittally. There were many things she was not driven to know, although there were also things that she has gotten pleasure from learning and demonstrating. So she could understand the sentiment even though the scope eluded her. That Hoge was hungrier than herself is something Chihiro accepted long ago.
Just before getting into the line, Chihiro stops in place. She can easily read the nametag 'Daisen Biki,' with the personal name in smaller font. She turns about and goes towards the other woman's stand, not noticing a few members of the crowd watching the pair from 1-D act oddly. Chihiro (the only person there in a kimono) is too focused on her objectives to keep wariness up on behalf of social anxieties. She crosses the court again and stops in front of the unhelpfully named 'BOWLS' stand. She can now read that this woman, too, has the same name tag - and same clothes, and same professional smile, and same facial features, and same body dimensions, and same stance. Hoge was right: this was an unusual amount of sameness. Even identical twins had different ways of holding themselves and became less and less similar over time.
Chihiro looked up to comment, only to notice Hoge was at the end of the line for this counter. She hurries over.
"Hoge-chan, what are you doing?"
"Huh? I'm in line."
"I can see that, but what are you planning?"
"Obviously, I am planning to ask her questions and buy a sticky white rice and konbu tuna bowl with sesame seeds and pepper-mayo-oil." She points up at a technicolor poke bowl on the menu. "I was worried I would not get to eat any seafood inside of the Harbinger, so I'm glad that I was mistaken."
Chihiro gets beside Hoge so she doesn't have to raise her voice. "I'm not sure that's appropriate behavior, Hoge-chan." The two step sideways together as the line shortens.
Hoge replies as much with her gestures as with her words. "Of course it is. Seafood by the seaside in a seamonster. That's X, X, X."
Chihiro barely shakes her head from side to side. "Putting aside your phrasing, that's not what I meant. You can't just ask people why they're identical."
"I don't see why not. What are you going to eat, by the way?"
"Is that what is most important here?"
"Chihiro-chan, it is very unhealthy to skip meals. Don't hold back. I have enough savings even to feed Kaylee-san a full lunch." After a beat, Hoge clarifies, "Probably."
Chihiro opens her mouth, rethinks herself, closes her mouth again. She parts her lips to speak one more time, squints, and holds a hand to her chin. She exhales sharply, tries one last time, and says, "Vegetarian bowl but get them to add pork too."
Hoge nods.
Making it to the front of the line, Hoge extends a polite greeting to the worker at the counter. She waits a beat and rattles off the two orders without further pauses. To Chihiro's growing respect, Biki speed-types the details into her register machine with one hand and readies two drink cups with the other. They, and napkins and utensils, get placed in precise geometries that Hoge over-appreciates in turn. The whole time, Biki gives an effortless smile without a hint of falseness in it. It's like she's genuinely contented to be doing exactly this.
"Counter employee Daisen, I have one more question."
"Of course, dear customer."
"Why are you the same as the woman at the gate and the carousel and over there?" Hoge points at each spot in sequence, as if everyone could see right through the walls.
Chihiro closes her eyes and stifles a sigh at the bluntness.
"Oh! Those are my sisters, more or less."
"Sisters? With the same name? What do you mean, more or less?"
"Hoge-chan, we should-"
"Well we have the same name because we're the same person, less or more."
"Huh?" blinks Chihiro.
"Please go on," says Hoge with a polite bow of her head.
Biki returns the bow. "I must keep it quick, dear customer. We budded from the same woman but we have all her memories. Then we made our own unique memories after. When I do the same someday, they will be the same people as me, but also different people too. Our grand-Daisen⁷ was hired last summer, and now there's four of us working here. We were lucky to get work so easily.
"I'm sorry, but your order has now arrived. I will have to continue with the line. Thank you for visiting the Bowl Meals at Genki Galaxy, and please enjoy your food! Good bye!" Daisen at BOWLS cheerily waves the farewell with both hands.
Hoge moves away with the drinks that had been filled during the exchange. Chihiro picks up the two bowls, and follows along with less precarious steps than her tengu-geta'd companion.
"It sounds like she goes through a full body mitosis, lending not just organelles and genetic information but whole organs and neurological information. That must be a difficult ordeal." Hoge sips from her cup. "There's barely any lemon in this water at all."
Chihiro doesn't know what to say, so decides to say nothing. 'That seemed unnecessary.' She shakes her head to clear the thoughts away.
The two girls meet up with class 1-E at a round table and join in with sharing a meal and conversation. Everyone talks animatedly about the day so far, and Hoge speculates aloud about Daisen Biki. Rikae tells her that a senpai works with several Bikis at a Support Company that sponsored the tournament. Everyone begins sharing anecdotes from their classes and it somehow leads to arguing about what makes a sandwich a sandwich. Of all the varying energy levels in the group, it is only Kouchan who keeps quiet, as she is too focused on devouring her order of fried chicken.
"Bumper cars?"
"Not right after eating."
"There's a theater over there?"
"Aomi'd rather do something more exciting than sit in the dark."
"Being in the dark can be exciting. Right, Kouchan?"
"I d-don't know what you could be referring to. I'm innocent and pure."
"Is it something to do with cat eyes?"
"Please just drop it."
"A good plan deals with these sorts of ambiguities in advance."
"Moments like this can be fun memories, though!"
As everyone else has a lively discussion about where to go and what to do next, Chihiro stands slightly apart from the group. She watches people in the crowd going about their normal lives - normal for a theme park patron anyway - and looks at the densely decorated scenery in every direction. None of it is quite as beautiful as what can be found around her home, but novelty can be interesting in its own way. She keeps turning to look around above everyone's heads, then something causes her to freeze in place.
The Ferris wheel. More than 150 meters tall, the enormous wheel is a major landmark in the park and has been haunting the back of her thoughts all day. The observation pods freely gyroscope on their mountings even as she watches from this distance. They effortlessly float above the ground like summer clouds. Upon the wheel's dozens of struts, a pattern of shifting colors dance hypnotically as pulses or spirals or ripples of rainbow light.
Something about it touches Chihiro through years of emotional armor.
"I want to go to there."
Hoge stops talking with the other kids and swiftly turns her head to Chihiro, then follows her gaze to the Wheel.
"There?"
"Yes," confirms Chihiro with wide open eyes. She is entranced.
"I'd like to ride this." She takes a single step forward.
"I'd really like to ride this."
Hoge breaks away from the circle with a purposeful stride. In passing, she takes Chihiro's hand and drags her forward. Chihiro has to hurry in rapid, short steps to keep up. Behind them, the others are momentarily stunned. They exchange looks.
Rikae pipes up. "Hoge-chan?"
She receives no response. Aomi is the first to follow, and once she does, Rikae is quick to join. Kaga flicks the brim of his hat and jogs forward with a shrug of his shoulders. In only a few steps, he adjusts into a knee-pumping run and doesn't slow until he's drafting behind Hoge cutting through the crowd. Koukoka releases a growling sigh.
"They're running off for some reason," she explains to Joan.
"I'll make it easier, then," says Joan matter-of-factly. Then she climbs onto Koukoka like a backpack, as Koukoka flings about her arms to keep balance.
"What the hell??"
"Let's not be left behind," the mushroom girl says with a smile. Her clouded over eyes are looking off in a random direction, where sunlight reflects off a chrome path fence.
Koukoka tisks audibly and secures Joan's thighs in the crook of her elbows, then tilts forward into a jog to catch up. "We're talking about this later!"
Hoge uses her free hand to urge slower pedestrians aside where she can't find the room to push between them.
"Hoge, I'm off balance."
"Lean into it!"
"Can we slow down instead?"
"We're almost there!"
Chihiro grabs a fistful of cloth and pulls up to give her legs more range of motion. In almost no time at all, they are at the surprisingly short line for the Wheel. Even in the light of day, the electric bulbs all over the attraction draw attention in their fluorescent flickering. It is as if an entire mountain of fireflies came together to create a parade. It is in constant motion. Compartments slowly drift by the loading platform where a pair of attendants - one with the pointed ears and pale spots of a deer, the other with a jagged black streak in her yellow hair - assist in riders disembarking and new riders climbing on without the massive structure having to come to a stop. The athletic pair release each others' hands and have no need to catch their breath.
By the time all of the Shiketsu students have gathered together again, Hoge and Chihiro are next to be loaded.
Rikae cups her hands around her mouth. "Hoge-chaan!" When the taller girl looks back, Rikae waves a hand over her head. Several people separate them in line, and the other 1-E students who arrived first leave their spots in line to rejoin their classmates. Seeing this, Hoge looks up to squint at the Wheel, down to Chihiro, then back to the others.
"I guess we should be sociable." Hoge leaves the front of the line and glances back to see if Chihiro will, too. Though her red-eyed friend looks back over her shoulder to watch the people behind them switches places with off-loading passengers, she does walk with Hoge.
A couple doll heads peek out from under the flap of Rikae's bag when she next speaks. "What was that about?"
"Ittouryoudan,"⁸ explains Hoge. "Following what Chihiro wanted seemed more important than being indecisive."
Behind her glasses, Hoge's black eyes flicked towards Joan, who was still being held piggy-back by an impatient-looking Kouchan.
Hoge quotes Joan back to herself: "'Whatever happens will happen,' right?"
Joan closes her eyes to smile back. "Right. Anyway, it would have been a shame to come to this park and not get on the Wheel at all."
Koukoka shifts her weight between her sneakered feet. "I don't mean anything by this, but Brooks-san, what do you get out of riding this? Without scenery, it's just sitting around and chatting, isn't it?"
"I like to sit around and chat. But also, no, there's other parts, too. There's the sounds of the cabins and the structure as they turn and balance. There's the change from shadow beneath the structure to open sunlight above it. There's also how you can feel the change in weight as you become lighter at the top of the Wheel and heavier coming towards the bottom. There's lots more to everything we've done than looking at scenery."
"Lighter? Really?"
"Correct," interrupts Hoge. "Centripetal force again. You experience half gravity at the zenith and one-and-half gravity at the nadir, approximately."
Koukoka's left ear twitches backwards for a moment, but the expression around her eyes is hidden behind her shades. Her mind turns.
It doesn't take much longer for the group of kids to be near the front of the line again. Even though the giant wheel moves slowly, with its capacity of almost a thousand people and its constant movement, it can go through a great many passengers in a short time. Without the momentum she built up, Hoge is getting increasingly nervous as the time to board comes close.
She keeps looking up at the distant peak of the Wheel. It is far above anywhere she's climbed before. It is taller than the largest of Kyoto's towers. When she thinks about how she'll be dangling from nothing more than struts and cables, surrounded mostly by glass alone, her guts feel cold. Her knees feel weak when she imagines what the view will be like.
She does breathing exercises and works through silent calculus problems to suppress her rising fear. It is very high. It is enclosed, but feels open. She rationalizes a numerator and applies the Squeeze Theorem to calculate an unrelated limit. She crosses her arms. Then clears her throat.
"I think it would be... fun.. to mix up the groups a little bit," Hoge ventures.
Chihiro dips her head down but rolls up her eyes to watch Hoge's face. Hoge is staring through the spokes of the Wheel. Joan cocks her head, and a smile gradually forms and widens as a plan manifests inside her.
"Yes, I think so, too. Let people who haven't talked enough get some time together."
Believing that Joan has divined Hoge's purposes, the fungal hero-to-be rises in Hoge's esteem. "Yes, like that. So 1-D should mix into different cabins, and 1-E should be mixed up a bit too."
Joan nods, but Aomi rotates mid-air so she's floating with her head towards the ground and her feet towards the clouds and begins whining. She poses directly over Rikae's head, reaching out melodramatically. Rikae plays along with sad eyes but an amused smirk, lifting a hand to almost reach Aomi's fingertips.
"Nooo~! Ao-hime-chan won't be split from Blue-chaaan," she complains in her most kawaii anime voice.
Most of the other kids watch this display neutrally, but Koukoka rolls her eyes and Joan giggles. Her mushrooms twitch.
"Alright, so I'll go with Nyoro-san and the Kamiyamis," says Joan, "and Mitsurugi-san can go with Mirokazu-kun and Fuhayai-san."
"They put four in a cabin. The other group will have to board with a stranger," Hoge says.
Chihiro nervously clasps her hands together, hidden in the bells of her sleeves.
"Leave that to me!" declares Rikae.
The petite blonde in frocks and lace removes her oversized fabric bag and her little squad of dolls jump out. Their little mitten-like hands work industriously alongside Rikae's as they take the bag apart, revealing that it transforms into a hooded cloak. The dolls stack themselves on top of each other and Rikae helps them wear it. They clutch the other items that were previously in the bag - or, at least, the ones outside of zipper pockets in the cloak's lining - to their little chests with one arm and hold the cloak closed with the other. Tiny booted feet stick out of the bottom of the cloak and a small felt-patched face frowns under the hood. Loose threads dangle from previous seams. The narrow profile of the stacked dolls is not human normal, but there's all kinds of oddities living their lives in the Quirk Age.
"Ta-da!," says Rikae proudly, with her arms spread to present the stacked dolls standing in a pinched-closed cloak.
"Eeeeto...,"⁹ says Koukoka.
"Good work," says Hoge with a nod.
Some of the other faces are less sure, but the attendants call out to the group and cause everyone to turn their heads and look.
"Next customers, please. Watch your step when loading and unloading."
Practiced hands and nonchalant attitudes guide the wobbling dollstack, Chihiro, Kaga, and Koukoka into the next cabin. It is only a minute or so more when Hoge, Rikae, Aomi, and Joan load into their own place on the Ferris Wheel. None of them see the attendants signal to a stand-by cleaning crew and gesture at their cabin with Aomi the devil-girl and Joan the fungus-girl inside. The workers exchange nods and gestures, and the janitorial staff set aside sanitation equipment meant for biological contamination.
While first going up, Hoge leans from her place in the middle of the bench seat to watch the ground recede. A heavy sound of sliding metal from above causes her to snap her head up to stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. If I fall I'll have to leap for a cable! No, wait, if I fall then the whole cabin goes, doesn't it? Aomi-chan can fly and will catch Rikae-chan which means I'll have to first get Brook-san before- Lost in the buzzing of a swarm of thoughts, she gets startled when Rikae speaks up. Hoge hiccups.
"Look! You can already see into other streets." She is sitting up on her knees with her hands pressed against the window glass. When she turns to look at Hoge, she furrows her eyebrows at the other's stiff body language. Aomi floats at the top of the cabin like she's in zero-G and waves down at the people below in an attempt to get as many as she can to wave back.
Rikae stands up next to her bench seat on the other side, beside Joan. "Is something wrong?," the dollmaster asks her friend from 1-D.
Hoge, too prideful to admit her nervousness openly, lifts her chin and puts on a slight frown. Then she shakes her head and breaks eye contact to go digging in her satchel bag. Moments later she is unzipping a storage case for her camera body and a thermos-sized zoom lens to screw into it.
Rikae gives Hoge a picture-perfect smile and pumps her head up and down in a single quick nod. "Good idea. There's bound to be shots worth taking as we change angles and get higher and higher."
She reaches into the hidden pockets of her own over-complicated dress to get the smaller, pink digital camera that she keeps on her person. Doing so, she misses Hoge flicking her eyes left and right at the end of Rikae's statement.
Hoge loops the camera strap several times around her forearm and disappears her eyes behind the camera and its viewfinder. Her breathing steadies while she points the camera out the window and surveils the scenes below. The lens mechanically whirs as she dials it in and out, rapidly refocusing, making the shutters speedily click through bursts of shots.
She gets a few of strangers making unguarded faces. A child releasing a UFO-shaped balloon in the middle of a full-bodied sneeze. Maintenance workers lounging and smoking behind the scenery shielding them from the eyes of guests. A crow standing on the back of a flying albatross. In the distance, a kid being held up to inspect the sharp-toothed kaiju. Close by, several different angles of cabling, tense like bike spokes. Looking at the world like this, the ground feels a lot closer, and Hoge feels a comfortable distance from the present moment.
~ ~ ~
Meanwhile, Chihiro is trying to look at everything, everywhere, all at once. Her head unceasingly turns towards every angle. Her hands are in her lap and, unconsciously, she has started to just barely swing her feet forward and back from her seated position. She cranes her neck to look at the vast mechanism of the Wheel, and the scenery falling away, and the behavior of the other people in her car.
The dolls have released themselves from their cloak now that the cabin is sealed and rising up from the ground. More accurately, they've gone still as Rikae's powers became too distant. At the start of the ride, Koukoka released a huff of a sigh, and posed them so that three were facing out through the windows, then tucked one into the corner that Chihiro's bench seat made with the wall of the cabin. Even with the gentle rotation of the cabin to compensate for the angle of the Wheel, and the restless movement of Koukoka and Kaga, the dolls were staying put.
Chihiro had no idea why Koukoka bothered doing it, but if Chihiro understood why most people did most things then she'd be a very different girl. Regardless, she was too busy taking in every rivet, seat stitch, odd stain, exterior tree leaf, and everything else to give it that much thought. Everything was part of her First Ever Ferris Wheel Ride. This was going to be a precious memory and she was going to make it a vivid one.
~ ~ ~
A little further down, the other cabin is starting to fill with conversation. Joan drags her fingertips lightly across the surface of her seat, especially at the corner and seam against the wall. She wants to find any break, any tiny crack in the firm surface that leads to the foam and supports beneath. It is easier now that she has Hoge rambling.
"And in short, that is qualia. Not the qualities, but the subjective experience of those qualities. The qualia of purple is not only different for every different person, but also is slightly different every time a person experiences it due to their mood, recent associated memories, changes in their body, et cetera."
Joan speaks slowly and calmly, as if recently awoken in the middle of a nap. "So what you're asking is if I experience a thing or if I am experiencing not-the-thing?"
"Not experiencing not the thing?," asks Aomi.
"No, that would be experiencing the thing by negation. You mean to say experiencing not the thing, or not experiencing the thing, little sister."
"That is what Aomi said!" The devil girl puffs out her cheeks.
"It's not," impishly giggles Rikae.
"So is there a qualia of blindness?"
"Hmmm. You know, people ask me about being blind pretty often, but not like that."
Hoge averts her eyes. 'Whoops.' She disassembles her camera and puts it away safely while Joan talks.
"Well, I'm blind, but not in the way where I lack all vision. When things are bright enough, I can see them, but it's hard to tell how bright something is. And it would be impossible for me to say for sure what color any lights are. It's more of a question if something is on, or off, or so brightly on that it will hurt me. I can't look at what Majestic-sensei does any easier than other people, judging by how they scream sometimes. And even I probably shouldn't stare at the sun. So basically I don't think I can answer your question, because I don't have a totally absent sense that you have."
Joan slowly splits her face into a toothy grin. Her milky eyes disappear behind her blue-green lids. 'Found a break!' "You do, though."
Hoge lifts her eyebrows in profound shock. She leans forward. "I do?"
"That's right. Some mutants have senses that other kinds of people don't have but other animals do have, right? Certain people have heat pits like a snake, or electrosense like a shark. But it's not just animal senses. Some people with plant-like parts sense light with their skin, and that would be different from your vision, wouldn't it? It would be closer to how my eyes see than how your eyes see." Joan gingerly pushes the gap open a little more so she can get her fingernail within. It feels soft, airy, full of strange chemicals and vapors.
"But I thought you meant that I do not possess a sense that you do possess. Why are we discussing photosensitive skin and heat pits?"
Unseen by everyone else, a nearly transparent, tiny white fiber pushes out from the nail bed of Joan's index finger. It snakes out from under the thick keratin and drills directly into the foam of the seat. Like a worm in the soil, it burrows, but unlike a worm, it silently branches out, unwinding from the secret symbiotic vaults within Joan's body. Chemoelectric signals pass back up and into Joan's human flesh, like shielded nerves, like fiber optic cabling - like a fungal rhizome. There are no words to describe what Joan experiences in any human language. Like taste, she becomes aware of what the tendrils contact and begin to probe or break down. Like touch, she feels the shifts in subjective gravity, the density and hardness of material, its adhesion and corrosion. Like hearing, she knows the shapes and hollows of what comes next. The fungus spreads deeper into the gloom.
"That's exactly what I mean. Fungi have their own senses. I am connected to them, and know what it is like to be them. You, Nyoro-san, are as blind to the chemoreceptors of a mushroom as I am to purple. What is it like?" By the end, Joan sways to one side, resting herself against the glass. She smiles pleasantly at the last place she heard Hoge's voice.
It takes a significant span of silent thought before Joan hears back the reply. "It is similar to realizing there is a space behind your head that you can never see. Which I realize is not a helpful comparison."
"...Aomi-chan's qualia is that purple is fourth best color. Best is black, then red, then blue, then purple."
~ ~ ~
Above, Chihiro's cabin is nearing the half-way point. She has her hands pressed to the glass and her nose nearly touching it as she gazes out over the park. She can see the arc of the plaza full of little animal statues, thinning out as the sunlight wanes. The people look like clouds of tadpoles swimming towards the train station or the tree-shaded parking lots.
"Mitsurugi, can I ask you something?"
Koukoka's raspy voice breaks some of the spell over Chihiro. Chihiro's back muscles involuntarily stiffen, and her shoulders crawl up closer to her ears. In her experience, questions that start like that aren't ones she likes to hear.
"...I may not answer," Chihiro says honestly.
"Why are you acting so different on this ride?"
'Nothing that bad, then.' She mulls the question over. Like grain beneath a millstone, she cracks it apart until it's fine enough to work with. Just as Koukoka is assuming Chihiro decided against replying, she does.
"When there's stories about places like this, there's always a part with a big wheel. If... things had been different, I would have been on one before. With my family."
Chihiro pushes away from the window and sits down fully. She corrects the placement of a doll that shifted, and looks at the ground. "I was excited because it felt normal. It's something everyone gets to do and now was my chance."
"I didn't say it was bad. Just different. It's not like I wanted to stop you or anything." There's a bit of steel in Koukoka's tone at first, but she starts to get quieter towards the end. She folds her body in and glares at a corner of the floor away from Chihiro. Her tail curls across her lap and beats against the bench with nearly silent thumps.
Kaga taps his index finger on his bicep with his arms folded. He sighs a bit and takes the hat from his head. After shifting closer to Koukoka and placing the fedora in the opened space next to him, he rubs the fuzz of his close-cropped hair and tries to think.
"We're all martial artists, right?"
Koukoka and Chihiro peek up at Kaga after he speaks. Curiosity gives him an opening.
"I've been training in weaponless techniques so far, but lately my ideas have been changing. See, at first, I thought that it would be safer for other people if I didn't have anything but my own body to work with. And given that my strength and my speed are always changing, the gap for mistakes would be narrow with something like a blade or keibo.¹⁰ And having a weapon slows you down, doesn't it? Most professional Heroes don't use traditional weapons, so I wouldn't need to as Fight Man. This has been my way of thinking, but I'm not as sure about it after the year we've had so far."
He looks at Chihiro. He looks at Koukoka. He puts his hands on his knees and waits in the silence.
"You may be neglecting a few things," says Chihiro eventually. Her posture is more normal and she returns Kaga's gaze. "It may be a little slower to move your arm when holding a saber than when you are moving an empty hand, but the advantage of an extended reach means that your blow has less distance to travel before it contacts or threatens an enemy. You gain in effective speed much more than you lose in practical speed, unless dealing with an unwieldy and heavy weapon."
The corners of Chihiro's mouth rise as she begins to talk about her favorite subject. "And you shouldn't worry about loss of control. When you get used to your weapon, it becomes an extension of your body. It is like a part of you. You wouldn't be any more likely to use excessive force with a keibo than you would with your foot. While I understand from seeing you in action before that the force you are multiplying is high, using a consistent force multiplier allows your muscle memory to learn how to use it safely."
Koukoka shifts a little closer to Kaga. "I guess you could say I fight armed as well."
She extends her nails into sharp claws, and her own Quirk makes them toughen and shine.
"I agree with most of what Mitsurugi said, but it's good to have a foundation where you use your body to its limit. Weapons are tools, and tools augment our natural abilities. You can't reach your peak if you aren't perfecting yourself first. It would take an extreme circumstance for me to become disarmed in a fight with a villain, but someone who concentrates on using weapons too much is in a lot of trouble if it suddenly gets knocked away or destroyed."
She turns away from the sun and pushes her shades up so that she can look directly into Kaga's eyes. Her voice becomes softer, taking on more of a purr than the growl she normally speaks with.
"I think it's good that you're being this responsible. And that you're working so hard to be the best you can be."
Kaga begins to smile. He looks at the white-haired catgirl's left eye, then into her right. "Kouchan..."
"There's something else," Chihiro says flatly.
Kaga quickly clears his throat into his fist and turns away from his classmate. He picks up his hat and slaps it back on, tilting it forward a bit to shadow his eyes. Koukoka snatches her shades back down and turns completely backwards in the seat, facing her blush into a blind corner. Her tail begins to whip in agitation and she quickly grabs it with both hands and curls it to her front, pinning it between the bench back and her torso.
Both of them had forgotten Chihiro for a second there.
"Heroes may not commonly use many weapons besides their own Quirks, bodies, and the tools to enhance both. But Villains are known to, aren't they? Learning how a weapon is used and its limitations means that you can become much more effective at defending and attacking an opponent who is using them. Even the basics can be enough to begin planning strategies."
It takes a bit of back and forth between Kaga and Chihiro for Koukoka to calm down and rejoin, but soon enough the cabin is full of the sounds of fight nerds. By the time they reach the very top of the Wheel, Koukoka and Kaga are in as high of spirits as Chihiro, and each one is holding a doll up to the window with them to see.
~ ~ ~
"It's too high! It's far too high! It's unconscionably high! It's unthinkably high! Too open and too high!" Not that anyone can hear what Hoge is saying.
Every time she accidentally looks out the window, she twitches and jolts, returning to the center of the bench. She clutches on to Rikae in her lap, embracing her like one of her dolls. Hoge shakes with fear and hides her face in Rikae's blonde locks. She tries very hard not to cry. Wasuremono hides her away, making it look like a dark cloud is encircling the awkwardly smiling Kamiyami Rikae and hazing out her edges.
"Oh, I feel so light. It's like I could float away."
"Aomi-chan is always floating! Aomi recommends it as a lifestyle."
"Black-orchid-blooming-in-darkness-Aomi-chan is too cute!," Hoge would choke out with a sob if Wasuremono allowed even a single noise to escape at the moment. "And she's never been so extra cute as now when we were locked together in a sealed room carried 150 meters into the open sky! It's all so scary!" Knowing Aomi would hate it if Hoge did it to her directly, she cries and pets Rikae's head like a cat. With every stroke, Hoge hopes that some kind of esoteric psychic twin link gives Aomi the comfort and affection too.
Rikae nervously laughs. "It's okay, Hoge. We're on the downward side now. Every second, we get closer to the ground."
"Your hair smells nice!," cries Hoge. "I want to know what products you use!"
"◯◯◯◯◯◯," is what the other three girls hear.
Shortly, everyone feels a lurch in their legs and their stomachs as momentum shifts towards falling. Hoge lets out such a loud scream that the twins begin looking all around the cabin for the source of that quiet flywing buzzing.
~ ~ ~
More than fifteen minutes later, the Kamiyamis, Joan, and Hoge rejoin the others in their cluster on the walkway. Hoge, cool as a cucumber, helps Joan over so she can retake Koukoka's arm. Then she calmly, smoothly clip-clops over to a waste bin by the path to throw away a clutch of used tissues and clean herself with hand sanitizer, standing alone.
"Did you have fun?," asks Joan, her words heavy with hidden meaning.
The dolls came back to life as Rikae was being replaced in the still-drifting cabin by a filter-masked janitor holding a bucket of supplies, and they are now climbing all over her and whispering what they witnessed in her ears. She giggles behind her hand at the gossip.
"Yes," say Kaga and Koukoka in unison, and look everywhere but at each other.
Chihiro gives a brief smile and nod to the returning Hoge, addressing her more than Joan. "Yes. I had fun on the Ferris Wheel."
Hoge takes a couple beats to ensure that her emotional mask is perfectly attached. "Good. Then it was all worth it. Can I make a request of the group, now?"
Hoge checks her bags one more time. She pats herself down to make sure all her pockets are indeed empty. She ticks through her mental checklist again, making sure she knows exactly where everything ended up - just in case something is missing afterwards. Her hand finds its way into her satchel again. With a hiss of machinery, the linked carts of Genki Galaxy's premier attraction dock into place. The students of Shiketsu are about to board the Stellar Voyage.
As she passes by, Hoge hands the greeter attendant her bag. She stares into his eyes with a firm expression. He holds the strap with his hand and his polite smile begins to stiffen. She has not let go.
The attendant barely opens his mouth as he delivers the boilerplate assurances required by the park. "As our guest, it is our duty and privilege to ensure your loose articles are safe while you enjoy your ride. Please, allow me."
Hoge squints at him. She pulls the hat from her head and tucks it into her bag too. Then she slowly releases her white-knuckle grip. "I have an inventory prepared," she tells him flatly.
The attendant bares his teeth in his grin. "Useful," is all he says.
Hoge walks forward to take her seat in the second car. Next comes Chihiro, who has nothing to hand over. The attendant keeps a careful eye on how she compares to the height marker adjacent to the loading area, but she isn't stopped from slipping into place beside Hoge. She pushes out the folds of her kimono as she sits. The ride fills up behind them.
"This will be the one," Hoge says, "I've been most excited about this ride specifically ever since you agreed to come."
"What makes it so special?"
"In a general sense, that it is a combination attraction with features of a classic dark ride as well as a traditional roller coaster. It is mostly an indoor attraction with an outdoor segment, which is the inverse of many roller coaster type rides. More specifically, the Stellar Journey features a maximum speed of more than 200 kmph and has segments reach 5 times the force of gravity. Any more and it would be a health hazard to the majority of the population."
There is a dangerous twinkle in her eyes when Hoge meets Chihiro's inquiring gaze. "This will definitely do something noteworthy, Chihiro-chan."
Before Chihiro can say anything back, the two have their attention drawn back to the attendant who is in an argument with some of the 1-E kids. Kaga is standing firmly beside the board with various heights marked. "You must be this tall to ride," reads the first bubble on the offending display, and Kaga only barely clears the line with his hat removed and his best, tallest posture. The attendant has a student ID card in his hand and his professional expression has cracked into one of open frustration. He slaps the card demonstratively with the back of one hand while he argues back with a spitting-mad Koukoka.
Koukoka has her claws shiny and black in the overhead lights of the launch bay. Her fingers twitch at her sides, as does Kaga's left eyebrow. His arms are crossed firmly, likely for the same reason Koukoka's hands are shaking. The short boy's eyes are closed and his face is red, though it's hard to say if it's in anger or in shame. Joan is trying to stand between the group and keeps trying to speak up, but the attendant is completely ignoring and talking over her, which is only sending Koukoka into more of a fit.
"The rules are the rules! He's more than tall enough! This is discrimination! It's offensive!"
"And what do I have that proves anything, huh? Some piece of plastic anyone could make with the right printer, huh? How am I supposed to know if he doesn't have shoe lifts in that get-up, huh? It's my job on the line, okay? And what if he just flies off or breaks his little neck or someth-"
"Little neck! Little neck! He's all beef! You're lucky he's such a good guy so he doesn't break you in half HUUUUH?"
"One more word out of you, kitten, and your whole party is getting security called!"
Chihiro and Hoge can see what's about to happen next clear as day in their minds' eyes. There's no good ways to spin the publicity that comes from the tension in Koukoka's back and the way her furious mouth is opening for a big inhale. Chihiro immediately dismisses using words to resolve this, as she is not adept in their use. A dozen more direct solutions speed through her thoughts in the blink of an eye and the world drags to slow motion. She can feel potential welling up from within herself, and knows she only has to reach out and direct it. But to where? If she knocks out Koukoka that only delays the problem and might get the trouble on her head instead, not to mention how it ruins what was such a nice day. Could she speed away Kaga instead? It is unfair but she can see no alternative. She begins to tip sideways and lift up her skirt so she can get into sprinting gait immediately.
Hoge stands up in the coaster car. She projects her voice out over all other sounds in the room, smothering them with her dutifully practiced full volume.
"Don't you recognize him? That is Fight Man. He was featured in international broadcast in a combat tournament."
The room goes still.
Things are quiet as much from the shock of such a prodigious volume coming from a nobody so suddenly, and then from certain keywords in the booming announcement. Recognize? Fight? International? Combat?
The attendant, stunned into a stupor, looks around to see every eye on him. His momentum is gone. His train of thought has derailed. "Fight...Man?"
He looks down at the boy in the man's suit. Kaga looks back at him with a vein pulsing in his temple.
"Ah! W-wait! The... the Shiketsu Battle Tournament, right? You, uh... I bet and...." Now the attendant is sweating. His fingers are trembling, and for a very different reason than the kids' were before. They were shaking in the effort of restraint. He is shaking as his nerves give out. He falls to his knees and ducks his head down. He holds the card up to Kaga two-handed, and begins bowing and scraping.
"I apologize! I apologize profusely! I was out of line! Please just... just take a seat an- and d-don't, uh... let's forget everything, right? I'm sorry!"
Kaga pinches his student ID card between a curled finger and his white-knuckled thumb. His thumbnail cuts a little crescent into the lamination. With effortful slowness, he slides it back into his leather wallet in the inner breast pocket of his blazer and ensures it is pushed deep enough to stay in place. Without speaking to anyone, he takes Koukoka's hand - whose face flips from a sadistic smugness at the attendant's kowtowing to one of blushing surprise - and leads her to an empty car with as much dignity as he can summon. Rikae directs her dolls to jog into the storage cubby area and take up guard on everyone's things while Aomi glides in to help Joan board. Someone in the filled coaster train clears their throat loudly and the attendant snaps his head up to look at them.
He climbs to his feet, looking like a defeated man waiting for his execution, and slumps into place behind his controls. When he leans forward to mumble into his microphone, he gets too close and his lips touch the spit guard. The sound from the overhead speakers becomes slightly distorted.
"Th-thank you for visiting with us today at G-g-genki Galaxy and have a nice flight. You will be advanced to the final check station where you will be cleared for... for launch. Thank you. Thanks." He presses a red button, drops into a nearby stool, and holds his head in his hands. The roller coaster rumbles forward.
Next, a bored-looking woman with bleached blonde hair ensures the harnesses are safely latched for every passenger. She gives a laconic canned speech to the passengers.
"Please keep all parts of, or attached to, your body within the space made by the vehicle at all times. All clearances are designed for Homo-typical sizes and proportions. Voluntary Quirk use is strictly forbidden, and involuntary Quirk use may be subject to financial or criminal penalties in the case of damages. Restraints must remain in place at all times for your safety as well as for the safety of other park guests. Ceramic shielding intact. All systems nominal. Hooray. You are cleared for launch."
She listlessly slaps a button when she gets back to her station and blows a big pink gum bubble as a pre-recorded voice begins playing from speakers hidden on the ride itself.
"Mission is go. Ignition in T-minus six, five, four," go the actors in the immersive sound environment. At the rear of the linked coaster cars, two retro-futurist stick engines begin lighting up and humming. "Three, two, one, LAUNCH!"
In an instant, a powerful magnet (directed to only the cars) and a hissing hydraulic system kick on in tandem. The coaster blasts ahead, kicking up a gout of wind that makes the attendant's bleached hair whip around wildly and pops her gum bubble. Every rider is plastered back in their seat, making several voices cry out in shock. In a fraction of a second, everyone is pulled into a dark tunnel filled with bright points of stars. It whips to the side and dives down into darkness, and a dome-topped flying saucer keens by while facing the other way, with its bright neon lights flickering readouts to the eye-stalked pilot within. In a swift, climbing corkscrew, the passengers are sped directly through the gap in a floating asteroid, going so fast that the brief tunnel of icy stone seems to close in around them.
Hoge feels her skin prickling and burning like she's caught in a microwave oven. To her alone, the world warps - near totally silent, just like in deep space. The ride seems like it is being muffled, but not by the imaginary walls of her spacecraft, but by the very grounded effects of her Quirk. Stress hormones are flooding through her system as she whips around faster than freefall, her balance totally disoriented, all control stripped from her. She tries to scream, she tries to laugh, she tries to choke out a sob somewhere between terror and joy, and none of it makes it out over her throat. In the brief passages of light during the ride, inverting, spinning, doubling back, dodging near misses with dense spaceport traffic and celestial bodies, she can't even see herself. She is a black smudge hazing backwards out of sight. Behind her she imagines she hears the echoes of pop pop pops among the screams and maddened laughter.
Chihiro presses herself back against the seat, hands clenched around harness bars, every cell in her body closed down except for her dilated pupils and gulping lungs. Part of her is afraid of losing control, but the vast majority of her is simply swept up into the moment by constant movement. It is a surreal experience for a girl capable of flash-stepping and other high-speed feats, to be unable to anticipate motion and velocity at all. In the darkness of deep space simulated by the ride, there's no way to watch the track coming ahead or predict the next direction, and Chihiro finds herself thinking it's... fun! It's fun to put yourself at the mercy of something safe but terrifying, and it's fun to be among people when they're all having the same experience together, and it's fun to be at an amusement park with other kids. Her stomach drops and feels like it's left a hundred meters behind her as everyone is blasted ninety degrees straight up towards a tunnel to a bright circle.
The walls of the tunnel turn from single points of distant light and galactic aurora to bright lines of increasingly blue light, as if they're approaching the very limits of speed. Darkness creeps in to the edges of Chihiro's vision as the high speed vehicle pulling them along tightens into a spiral that transforms into a length of track that sees them turning upside-down and being pulled off of their seats and into the cushions of their harnesses. She is surrounded by screaming from other people, and her mouth opens in an 'O' of surprise at the sensation. The tunnel blazes with the dancing lights of atmospheric re-entry, yellows and oranges and brief whirling moments of blue or green. Without even a moment of warning, the tunnel disappears and the group finds itself in the open air, surrounded by real sunlight, high above most of the park.
The coaster cars halt at the crest for just long enough to allow some people to recover from brief g-force blackouts and for everyone to understand what's about to happen. Wind whips noisily around them. Anticipation pulls a rising yell from many throats. Park guests on walkways far below point up at them, and some people wave or laugh. The vehicle doesn't just dive, it accelerates with a mechanical scream of its own from the hydraulics. A moment after cresting the towering peak, flashes and automatic cameras capture the scene. A moment after that, a forceful wind presses everyone's skin and hair and clothes back and up against the unyielding call of Earth's gravity.
One last collaborative scream. One last thrill for the Stellar Voyage. Pure speed flows through all of the riders. Hoge is so deafened she can hear the tiny sound of blood rushing inside her head. Chihiro blinks away tears in the wind and the sunlight and is so caught up in being present that she couldn't possibly tell what she's doing with her body. Kouchan has gotten Kaga to raise his arms up above his head, just like she is, and they're laughing together. Joan placidly looks at the brightest part of the scene with a contented expression, as if she is simply taking a car ride on a country road. Aomi-chan is laughing so hard that she is leaving a trail of glittering tears behind her in the wind, and Rikae is yelling her head off like so many other passengers. When the ride finally comes to a stop at ground level, it takes a few moments for people to begin chattering among themselves and feeling stable enough to disembark.
An attendant next to a decorated tunnel passage asks if anyone coming off the ride left possessions at the start. When several people confirm, she directs them within, and Chihiro follows through just to stay with the group. Everyone walks beneath the ride and up a moving ramp, passing by dioramas and displays of fantastical sci-fi scenes populated by big-headed robots and inventive alien creatures. It empties into a room with an open doorway, through which the group can see the loading bay and the man from before with his head dropped low: a wispy-haired man in a pressed suit (likely his manager) is berating him thoroughly for his earlier behavior.
To speed things along, Rikae gets her dolls to bring everyone's things directly to their owners. Hoge gratefully pats the one helping her on its felt head and gives a warm-hearted nod to her buddy Rikae-chan. She methodically goes through every object and pocket in her satchel to make sure nothing was stolen, especially not one of her weapons or the first aid kit, and only puts back on her hat and fanny pack when the inventory has been satisfied. People are still too tired from the hair-raising experience on the ride to have more than light conversation, and so it's only natural that many of the kids choose to stay silent all the way back through the convenience tunnel and out into the sunlight again.
Chihiro stretches her back and shoulders by raising her hands high above her head and arching up. She feels a small pop in her sternum and suddenly feels looser. In just that brief time, it seems Hoge has left her side again, but Chihiro quickly spots her at a wooden booth next to the Stellar Journey's exit. She walks over to see what the taller girl is up to this time.
"Hm? It's a photo stand?"
"Correct! I wanted this most of all. It was the final piece of my plan for today!" Hoge drums her fingers in an impatient polyrhythm on the counter, but in actuality has a relaxed posture and a bit of a smile on her lips. She adjusts her glasses again - 'how did those stay in place so well on the coaster?' wonders Chihiro - and the kiosk worker hands over the large printed photopaper and a bank card to Hoge's waiting hands. Hoge bounces on her toes in excitement after she steps out of the way to let other people request their own prints. Chihiro follows with more timid steps.
Hoge tilts it so Chihiro can see. It is a perfectly framed photograph of everyone on the connected cars, just as they were at the start of the final dive. Chihiro widens her eyes into saucers and her jaw goes slack when she processes what she sees.
At the back, nearest the top, are mostly strangers. Their faces are contorted into grimaces of mixed emotion, though mostly excitement and good humor. A man has a hand pressed firm against the top of his head as his toupee has peeled off his polished bald spot and flaps around in his fingers. A woman holding on to the crook of his arm has her eyes closed tightly and can't see the fleeing wig. The other kids are making their own fun, interspersed with other strangers in various states. Hoge looks more like a dust cloud being wind-whipped back into the irritated face of an oyster-headed man, who is letting out a bed of foaming bubbles from his open bivalve. It's like the illusion of Hoge's dispersal is stinging him into blindness and confusion. But what truly surprised her is witnessing herself and learning what that moment was like outside of pure sensation.
Chihiro is smiling blissfully. The corners of her eyes crinkle in mirth. Captured in this moment frozen by the camera, Chihiro is briefly unburdened by her past, by the pressure of other people, and even by her own judgement. She looks like a happy kid. She looks just like what she really is: the older version of the little girl that appears alongside her parents in the old photo albums.
Hoge, unknown to herself, literally begins to shine in the afternoon sunlight with her self-satisfaction. "It's perfect."
She pulls a padded envelope out of her bag and removes the length of paper that protects the sealing strip. She deftly slides the small-poster sized photograph into it and shuts it up tight before replacing it in her bag and settling it with a firm pat. Chihiro just stares at Hoge's satchel, as if still seeing what it contains.
Hoge blinks twice at Chihiro. Then she places a hand on Chihiro's back, between the shorter girl's shoulder blades, and directs her back to the photo booth.
"Excuse me. I'd like to buy a second copy. A smaller one. Is it possible to crop it?"
"Yes, dear customer. Please use this device here to choose the cropping."
"Mm. I will need assistance with this; it is a Quirk issue. Can you just get it so these faces at the front are still visible?"
"Of course. It's no issue. Like this?"
"Like that."
Chihiro is still in a thoughtful daze as Hoge makes the purchase, but the spell is broken as she gingerly brings Chihiro's hands around the bottom corners of the photograph.
"Chihiro-chan, would you prefer to carry it, or should I give it to you tomorrow at school? It will be safe in my bag until then. I guarantee it."
Chihiro stares at the image for a long moment. She stares at herself, who looks like a stranger.
Class 1-E call out to the pair from 1-D to get them to hurry over. Hoge completely ignores them as she watches Chihiro.
"...Please bring it with you when you visit the dojo tomorrow."
Hoge, dancing inside, gently nods. "Of course. Count on me."
The two quiet girls from 1-D are characteristically silent after they rejoin the group from 1-E. Everyone moves together in an aimless stroll closer to the portion of the park built over the sea itself. The sounds of the early evening crowd around them are all that covers up Hoge's percussive footsteps and jingling buckles. Chihiro practically disappears as she is hidden by the flow of traffic. Just like on festival days, the petite swordmaster has become an anonymous face in the crowd, and finds comfort in unpersonhood. The other kids have their own tight bond between them, forged in the trials of combat training, rigorous study, and the highs and lows of high school society. They walk and talk behind the taciturn pair of Chihiro and Hoge like they exist in a parallel world.
Hoge stops in place. The crash of the ocean makes itself heard beneath everything else. She stands and listens.
Chihiro stops walking and turns back with an inquisitive quirk of her eyebrow. Conversation peters away. Rikae, Aomi, Kaga, and Koukoka stop walking before they can bump into her and have their own looks of curiosity. Joan gets halted by Koukoka coming to a stop and swivels her head around in all directions, making her visible mushrooms wobble.
"What is it?" the fungoid daughter of a foreign diplomat asks the group. Chihiro walks the two steps backward it takes to stand next to Hoge again.
"I am nearly at my limit, and have to save something for the journey home. My legs hurt. This is it for me." In a slight contradiction, Hoge places a foot behind herself and smoothly spins in place. She ends up perfectly reversed from her previous facing. Sea spray sneaks up from between the boards underfoot and flits through the air. Hoge places her hands above her knees and fully bows forward.
"Thank you for the invitation. I had fun and completed my objectives."
There is a pause. Aomi swoops in and pats Hoge on the back of the head. "Mission accomplished. Thank you for coming!"
Hoge stands up fully, smirking, and puts her hand on top of Aomi's head too. Aomi grins toothily and floats just a little bit higher to force Hoge to stretch or give up on the mirrored gesture. She decides not to stretch in geta, and glances over at Chihiro. "I will be going now. Did you want to join me?"
Chihiro clearly gives this question some thought. She looks over at the clump of 1-E students, then back to Hoge. "I... also had fun. I think it would be nice to try the games on the boardwalk. I still have the train pass from this morning, so I will be staying."
It's too much for Hoge, especially a tired Hoge. Warmth floods up from her belly and covers her over the top of her head. Pride, happiness, and relief mix together into a force too powerful to deny, and before she even realizes what she's done, Hoge wraps her arms tightly around Chihiro's shoulders and picks her up into a bear hug. Chihiro, her arms pinned to her sides, opens her eyes as wide as they go then rapidly blinks several times. Her toes dangle downward.
After a firm squeeze, Hoge puts her down and tries to speak, but it comes out like the hush of ocean waves. Wasuremono mutes some of the blush across her face and hazes her edges. Hoge gives an emphatic nod. She pats her bag. She gives Chihiro a thumbs up, and then - worried it comes across as sarcastic or dismissive - makes the same gesture with her other hand too. She takes large strides away from the other Shiketsu students and waves good bye with big, full-shoulder sweeps.
The teenage ninja stays keyed up until ten minutes after her train home leaves the station. She opens up her satchel, wondering if she should keep reading her poetry book or if she should check her phone instead. Lately, it hasn't been so impossible that there could be a conversation on pause on the device. But when her hand goes inside, her fingertips first brush against the thick paper of a large envelope. A moment passes. Hoge pulls it out and places it on her lap. A few more empty moments pass. Fetching a small knife from a tight loop within the bag, she carefully opens a slit at the top crease, and feeds the photo poster up through it enough to look at the faces of the riders on that roller coaster. A giggle comes out of her when she looks at all the huge expressions on most of the faces, and Chihiro at the front with a relaxed happiness.
Hoge holds a hand up to hide the bubbling of her laughter from the train. Her unrestrained smile reaches all the way up to her eyes.
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Difficulty_of_reading_names Because Japanese names written in Kanji can have so many interpretations and pronunciations, people meeting for the first time might inquire as to what characters (and their associated meanings) that particular person uses. This manner of small talk is what is happening here.
²This sounds better in the original japanese. You do watch these subbed, right?
³Because birth orders differ by seconds to hours in twins, Rikae is slightly older than Aomi. In the long tradition of twins, Rikae never lets her imouto forget this.
⁴lit.: "Uwa! Ara ara! Kowai!" Hoge is fond of short linguistic cliches, idioms, parables, and aphorisms. Whenever she doesn't know what to say, count on her to quote one of her favorite Yojijukugo.
⁵Point of the blade faces forward, hands at the right side with tsuka, keep the point of the blade to the face of the opponent, blade should be horizontal. Most useful for reflecting light at the opponent to blind them, guarding against certain kinds of overhead strikes while still threatening the opponent's face, and looking cool in samurai movies. More popular in western sword styles than eastern ones, where a similar fencing grip is called the Ox Stance.
⁶Yoshi! meaning, "fine, let's do this!" Not related to the famous saddled dinosaur.
⁷She refers to her as "soBiki," a pun on 祖母 or "sobu" - a grandmother. We did our best to keep the spirit and flow in our translation.
⁸一刀両断: literally, "one saber, two severed." A Yojijukugo that means to take decisive action, like cutting something in half with a single sword stroke. Have you heard of Alexander the Great's solution for the famous Gordian knot puzzle?
⁹A common Japanese filler word. Somewhere in the politeness scale between ano (innocent stalling for time) and te iu ka (the politest way to tell someone they're flat wrong.) Fuhayai Koukoka is stretching out the word as she struggles to not be mean.
¹⁰A short baton used primarily by Japanese police to joint-lock and bludgeon suspects and witnesses.