Out and About

I look to her despite my grumbling stomach and smile lightly. "How long have you been using your blade and do you train often?" Perhaps conversation will get my stomach off of the pain it feels.

i shrug "well i have owned this sword for the better part of the month but i have one hundred years of experience from constant warfare but to answer your other question i dont train much".

"A hundred years?" Shock slips into my voice as I look them over. "Surely you must be joking... You do not seem that old."

i take my hand up and start counting "ive been alive oh around one hundred and twenty years give or take and as for me looking young until very recently i looked like a 40 year old man" i take a bite from the pizza and continue "what do you know about modernish history?".

"What is modern?" I watch her confused as I cannot take my eyes away from her pizza. Is that simply how you eat this troublesome thing. But it burns and drips everywhere....

i ponder as i try to find out what to say "well i was in the army seventy or eighty years ago i was in an elite part called the waffen ss which also was the worst part" i finish the slice "when our leader realized we were loosing the war he ordered scientists to research transhumanism" i gesture at myself "im the result i wont die in another hundred years i dont die unless im decapitated and my heart is cut out and i regenerate my body parts and any wounds in a few days at the most".

"So.... You were a man... That was changed into a woman...?" I try to wrap my head around this concept as I look to the pizza and again attempt to pick it up and eat it.

i nod my head "yes that is correct but they kind of merged my soul with that of a woman to make it more agreeable with me".

I finally manage to pick the blasted slice up and hold it haphazardly. "I see... That is... A most interesting predicament."

i shrug "well yes i dont have the upper body strength i used to have before" i look at my body and smile "but i am quite a bit more lithe than before".

As Adrianna stares at the two and Kaija giggles, I roll my eyes. "You must practice your lewd expressions in a mirror to get them to that degree."

"My grandfather explained to me that power is not everything in swordsmanship. Speed can be equally deadly when applied properly to the right area. Your are not forcing the blade to move so much as it pivots; thus increasing the speed and efficacy of the attack." I finally manage to take a bite of pizza and give up making a sentence as my eyes roll closed. What is this thing called again? Do i really care? It's delicious.

i shrug and say dryly "i wasnt being lewd i actually am becoming more agile which contributes to my abillity at arms".

I shoot Sori a long, measuring look across the table. "I'm sure." But even a fairly cynical mood can't stop me smiling at the look of Kiou. Such bliss in her head, and all over a slice of pizza. Yes, the girl will fit in just fine.The young woman's mind flashes, bright enough to make me glance at her. Disdain, a color that lies somewhere between grey and blue and green, the color of thick ice in a bitter winter. With another comprehensive and dismissive glance, she stands. "Let's talk again, shall we? When you don't have your-" she shoots a coldly distasteful glance over my friends-"gaggle along for the trip." She drops a folded paper on the table in front of me, and, cooly as a cat, slinks out the door.
I stare after her, dismayed and taken aback, the hair along my spine standing on end.
That girl....I shake myself a little, and pocket the paper.
Throughout the rest of the meal, I let the conversation of the others wash over me, let the melodies of their conversation flow by. Finally, we're home. It's late, later than I had thought. The others are in bed.
I slip out of my clothes and into our bed quietly as I can, and lie back, my mind churning. That girl's eyes, her colors, are weaving through my mind. Dangerous, her. Too cold. Too hard. And her music was like that, too. Beautiful yes, but hard, dark, too full of undertones of force and demand. That tune she'd played...hard, fast, almost frantic. Lovely, but...something about it, something I had not noticed at the time, is nagging me.
I sigh, crossing my hands behind my head. That whole thing, foolish of me. I was caught up in a pretty tune, and worse, in a delusion of my own making. I thought, for a moment there, that maybe I could prove the prophets wrong, that my half sister would be no danger whatsoever, and moreover that I could make her friend and thwart fate. And, to my shock and chagrin, I find that a part of me wished to become her friend if only to learn about my father. Finding that curiosity about the man whose existence I had denied, had pushed away from myself so long is like discovering a wound that you hadn't noticed getting. Once you realise you have it, it aches.
But I was wrong. How many tales do I know that warn against ignoring fate? I should know that danger better than most. And I put my friends in her way. I put them in danger. Sori, and Lily, who is fragile enough despite that spiky shell, and poor sweet Kiou.
They could have gotten hurt. Kiou almost did get hurt. And that was my fault as well. I have got to be more careful. I'm not just watching out for myself anymore. I'm watching out for them.
It takes me a long time lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, before I am able to sleep.