Rooftop Rumble - Sayaka Miki
"Is Kyouko-san here yet?" Yuma asked, flopped on her back.
"Nope," Sayaka replied, equally positioned.
The two of them lay on the 'boarding school's' roof, hands laced behind their heads as they stared up into the early morning sky. One was a scrawny eight going on eleven, the other a sadly short fourteen that had already passed her sweet sixteen. A warm breeze was blowing, ruffling their clothes and luring them towards sleep.
Not that they really dared get
that comfortable. This was Kyouko after all.
Still, for all that they had woken up at the crack of dawn for her new training regimen, it was nice being here. Life as a puella gave you so few chances to just slow down and appreciate life, and after the last month – well, they needed this.
Both of them yawned in tandem.
From somewhere below, there was a thud, and a curse. Sayaka tried to remember who was supposed to be on rotation to play dorm mother, and then dismissed it when she heard the person responsible awkwardly clamber up the ladder leading from the inside of the attic to the roof, then toss a bag up, things jostling and clattering within like a parade of pots as it landed.
"This is
unnatural," a voice rasped. Sayaka tried to place it, and failed. "What
time is it even?"
"Dunno," Sayaka replied.
An irate, white haired head thrust itself into her view. "No. The answer is supposed to be
I do know."
Sayaka blinked owlishly. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Keiko in full combat paraphernalia. Couldn't remember the last time she'd
seen the resident hikkikomori-scientist at all, in fact. She looked, uh, surprisingly good. At some point during the last two years she'd evidently learned how to brush her hair, and even if it had gone prematurely and unnaturally white, it went well with the rest of her look. The enormous ruff of her furry red poncho thing dangled with the spades and clubs of card suits, complementing the black, fingerless gloves she wore.
If not for the fact that Keiko looked ready to wilt, her red, sunken eyes squinting behind the frames of her glasses, Sayaka would have thought her as a normal human being – or as close to normal as any one of
them could get, anyway.
"Keiko-san," Yuma greeted, a yawn interrupting her halfway through her greeting. She grinned sleepily. "Good morning."
"Good crack of dawn more like," Keiko said, dropping down to sit. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her palms. "Where's Kyouko?"
"Late," Sayaka and Yuma informed her simultaneously, almost singsong.
Keiko groaned, spread her arms and fell down with an audible thump. "That is just - that is just
typical. I have work to do, important work. She realizes this, yes? I can't just
leave we're involved in something really interesting, Mami-"
An apple splattered against the albino girl's head. Literally splattered – Sayaka was looking at her and saw how it exploded, the skin splitting and the contents bursting with freshness like some sort of fruit drink commercial. The scientist meguca spluttered, spitting and wiping bits of runny apple from her glasses.
"Ow, what the sh-"
Another apple took the wind out of her, hitting her stomach and knocking her to the ground. The third was aimed for her head, but found itself sliced in half as Sayaka sheared through it in a single motion, standing protectively over the other two meguca as the halves spun away off her blade.
"What the hell?" Sayaka said, eyes scanning the rooftop. She'd
heard from Kaoru that Kyouko was an unbelievably medieval coach, but this was aggressive, even for her.
Another apple - Sayaka batted it away.
"Kyouko, this is
not cool."
"Ow!" Yuma cried.
Sayaka whirled, an apple had hit the young meguca too, somehow, thrown from Sayaka's blind spot and a completely different direction than the last one.
"Kyouko?" Sayaka growled. "Stop it."
Heavy boots tromped hit the ladder. "Stop wh
... who the hell is wasting apples?"
Sayaka turned – that voice had come from behind
her, from the rooftop's attic entrance. In her peripheral vision, she saw another apple appear out of thin air, a hand appearing low, just over the lip of the roof in order to throw it, but she'd been distracted, her stance was off, she wouldn't make it in time.
This time it was caught in a certain redhead's hand, just before it slammed into her cheek. Sayaka had to keep herself from yelping: five meters in an instant and she wasn't even a teleporter.
Kyouko looked at it, rubbed it against her sweater, and then nonchalantly took a bite out of it.
"You waste any more apples," she said, her mouth full of white appley chunks, "or hell, any food at all, and we are
done. I will get Mami to boot y'all back to the woods you came from and la-dee-da, you take your chances with the rest of the trigger-happy losers."
"I second that motion," Keiko wheezed from the ground.
A girl appeared from just
beyond the rooftop, slowly rising, her dark blond hair wind tousled. Sayaka tried not to notice how surprisingly pretty she was now that she'd had some food and rest and a shower. Wasn't this, uh, Yamakage-san? One of the Tokyo meguca?
Then Sayaka boggled as her brain caught up with her eyes: wait, was she flying?
"I'm sorry, it won't happen again," Yamakage Suzuko said contritely.
Another popped up from the other end of the roof, looking younger than she did, and outraged. Sayaka... honestly could not remember her name. Her brown twin tails waved in the wind. She was scowling like someone had personally offended her. "It took them
two seconds to react. Two whole seconds. How the fuck are they still alive? I get the nerdmeister, but the little one didn't even take out her weapon yet. She should have died
years ago-"
"Urako," Yamakage admonished. "Shut
up. You are not helping."
"Oh fuck that," Urako snapped. "I bet the kid's like the oldest one among us, she can handle a little criticism-"
Yuma looked ready to cry. "I'm – I'm eleven."
Kyouko sighed. Sayaka turned to look at her: the redhead had covered her eyes with the palms of her hands.
"Shit. Sorry kid," Urako said, looking genuinely apologetic. "I, I thought-"
"Lord, lord, lord," Kyouko bit out, half prayer, half curse. She shook her head, put her arms down, and reached out towards Yuma. "Come here kiddo, I know that was scary, but you promised you'd be brave, right?"
Yuma nodded, swallowed, and then rushed to Kyouko's side, somehow ending up behind her, hiding everything except her head. Sayaka frowned: was that normal eleven year old behavior? Were they babying Yuma a little too much? Keiko was finally sitting up, groaning.
"And you two Tokyo idiots - get off those floating barriers. Cool idea; still magic. Someone gets all this on tape and we are screwed six ways to Sunday," Kyouko continued. She waved off the beginning of Urako's angry denial. "No, no, don't get your panties in a bunch, I
get it, I did it on my own for a few years too, fought of all comers, had my own territory; and yeah, nobody here looks like they're ready for that, but you are going to have to. slow. the fuck. down. and. adapt. Things are different when you can't just disappear when things get inconvenient."
She paused for a second.
"Things are different when no one wants to
fight. Trying to change all that is - it's not going to work real well. We're family, not an army. Think of them as - as your sisters, okay? Be patient. Be understanding. Be
kind. And be ready to go nuclear on anyone who messes with your fam."
The two of them quickly hopped onto the roof, looking a little more nervous than before.
"Okay," said Kyouko. "I… I wanted to do something different today. I wanted to just
talk, get everyone used to the idea that what Mami has created is pretty freaking special, and that this is not what the world actually looks like, but clearly that isn't going to work out. So here is what we are going to do. We are going to get off this roof. We are going to go to the basement. And me and Yuma here will team up against all y'all and play a little dodgeball. Let's see how well we do. Capische?" Kyouko said, smiling.
She looked relaxed and happy.
Shit, thought Sayaka.
"Understood," she said instead.
"Excellent!" Kyouko said, ushering them towards the ladder leading indoors. "I'm thinking of calling this little rumble Two Minute Terror. I'll be expecting some solid feedback here. What you thought I did well, what you thought I did less well, and how piss-in-the-pants scared you were. Here at Kyouko Training Corps we aim to deliver the best possible product."
Double shit, thought Sayaka.
She's pissed.
"Can I go back to the lab?" Keiko said. She tried to unobtrusively hide the bag of tools she had brought up with her. "I'm running-"
"No." Kyouko said, smiling even more widely.
That stapled on smile followed her all the way to the basement.
The following hour was the opposite of fun.
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CoC: Miki Sayaka, Yuma, Keiko, Yamakage Suzuko, Segawa Urako, and Sakura Kyouko.
Time: Turn 29 (approximate)
Omake Notes: This was one of the original three omakes I had planned way back when (originally titled Two Minute Terror), and the only one I found in a text file. I hadn't finished, so I changed things up halfway, not describing the fight, and letting Kyouko be the voice of reason for once, and help show the influence of the Tokyo arrivals on anti-meguca training. I am pretty sure this is not canon compliant though, seeing as Kyouko is present, but it's always easier to write canon characters, at least for me.
As for the others
The Four That Fell is so far missing despite me having written a solid chunk, and I don't entirely remember what I planned for Seto's backstory, boxing, I think? I'll probably just write new ones instead, because I was getting serious writer's block for The Four That Fell.
