Safe-Keeping
Keiko peered nervously at the lit window above her from the street below. When Sakamae had called, saying that Katsuko had been looking for a successor, Keiko had thought it was a joke. Or at worst that Katsuko had burned out in being dragged along for the past, year and a half with science. She wished it was one of those options as Sakamae let her into the boarding house.
She was not supposed to find Katsuko up at two o'clock in the morning. That was Katsuko's job, to drag
her to bed, and if… alright
when, that proved fruitless to pour herself a cup of coffee and supervise as
science happened .Keiko should never be in the position of dragging Katsuko to sleep.
Sakamae quietly led Keiko to a small room that Katsuko had converted to a room of… science madness. The other occupants of the room had fled, taking cover elsewhere away from Katsuko's sudden change of behavior. Sakamae patted Keiko on the back, before stepping away. The message was clear. It was all in Keiko's hands.
Oh what had she done to deserve this?
"Katsuko, you need to sleep", Keiko called from the doorway. She waited for Katsuko to respond, maybe a response about hypocrisy, or even one of the numerous paper coffee cups scattered around the room thrown at her head.
All she heard was silence.
Keiko wished she had brought a kitten with her, and stepped hesitantly over the boundary of the room. She touched Katsuko's shoulder, finally dragging her partner's attention away from the stack of paper she was writing.
"Keiko, you should" Katsuko's voice was cut off by a yawn. " be in bed."
"You first," Keiko responded, before peering over Katsuko's shoulder at whatever had kept her friend up so late. Katsuko flipped over the papers in retaliation, glaring at Keiko.
"Bed." The order would have been more effective if Katsuko had neither yawned or nod her head as she said it.
Keiko paused, trying to think of how… well Katsuko would have handled the situation. She started to pick up the used paper cups to throw away into the trashcan, buying time to think.
"What are you working on?" Keiko asked, giving up. She was not Katsuko, and the best thing she could do was join.
Katsuko looked at Keiko sullenly, as if… Keiko could not say what.
"I talked to Rika today." Keiko racked her head trying to place the name. Katsuko spent time with her to prevent a repeat of the magnesium flare, and at least in part because she also enjoyed experimenting. Everyone Katsuko spent time with Keiko knew, if only because Katsuko had called in backup the one time Keiko had tried the expresso, but she did not know that name.
"Chihoko's little sister. The family had stopped by the police station, to see… if Chihoko was found among this month's Jane Does." Katsuko shook her head. "And that'll be happening again if we can't get our two back out from Serena's aura."
Keiko quietly drew up to Katsuko. "Kat, they are dead if they leave…"
Katsuko flipped through her stack of documents, before drawing out one to press into Keiko's hands. The title on top read "Drug Withdrawal" and was liberally coated with Katsuko's handwriting encircling some portions with questions and notes scrawled between lines and in the margins. The one paragraph with the most densely packed additions was the one detailing the dangers of a complete and sudden curtailing of a drug.
Keiko looked up from her reading to see Katsuko nervously looking at her. Keiko was the head scientist, of the Serenes and Katsuko's friend. Keiko put her nose back to the paper, and began to pace to hide her grimace. She was not the one to make these calls, it was Katsuko's job to do this! But jumping from a tenth story building would kill a normal, while a two or three story building would be survivable… Keiko nodded to herself.
"What do you got?" Keiko asked, pulling up a chair. Katsuko broke into a grin at the validation that she was not wasting her time.
"Alright, there are three main approaches as I can see to attempt a detox. No matter what, we have to have a smaller stepping stone than a cold turkey withdraw. That means we have draw the aura down from full power. We could recreate the aura at a less powerful strength with a set of wards, bind it to a location-"
Keiko cut in, grabbing the back of a piece of paper. "Oh!, And we could reuse that in demon hunts! Set up the wards around a suspected/proven nest and repeat what we did at Tokyo but with a smaller scale. It would have less benefits, but less side effects."
Katsuko nodded. "And that would make use of the tiers of strength we would need for this. Say, eighty percent power would be too much for a handful. But twenty, or ten? That would let the full scaling set to be viable outside of detox."
Katsuko turned another page. "Another possibility is a single person charm, to negate the effects of the aura on them. This would be quicker for development than making a whole detox room, since we would could possibly start handing them out at five percent, and work them down as we go."
Keiko jumped in once more with the combat applications. "Oh, and that would enable our forces to stay in longer than we can now. Pair that with ward sets and you can bypass the drunkenness that Kyouko has been complaining about while still affecting the demons! Or…" Keiko snapped her fingers, before jumping up to pace again. It was just at the tip of her tongue… The mad scientist clapped her hands together as it came to her. "And a complete buffer would let Sato be usable with Serena despite the aura!"
Katsuko nodded, writing down what Keiko was saying, and rewriting Keiko's pigeon scratched notes upon the combat usability of the Serena wards. "The most efficient production wise would be to create a nullifier to be given to Serena, but that runs into the problem of how dangerous it would be for the girls we are trying to get out of the aura. If one starts to spin out, the only way to save them would be to drop the nullification entirely, plunging everyone back to full blast.
Keiko nods, "Despite that, this is likely something that we will be looking at for Serena's sake. Being out by yourself, it's lonely. Something else we should consider, as an intermediate to the ward sets, are smaller personal charms. If we can work a detox, a one or two aura charms to stop or halt a death spiral, or at least buy enough time to… wait Serena would hopefully having a nullifier charm… Ah, we could use a full aura ward set to stabilize, and then drop them down from that to eighty, seventy... Whatever is a safe rate "
Katsuko nods, but bangs her head onto the desk. "The problem is that there is no way to test this except with one of us and…"
Keiko frowns, before flicking Katsuko in the head. "You are being stupid.
Mice. And if that does not work… Well, well talk to Kyouko and
not Mami about purchasing monkeys. Or more likely stealing monkeys. But why are you in such a rush, Katsuko? We've been working together for over a year.
You tell
me to slow down. "
Katsuko looks up, and then draws from the bottom of her stack a final list. It is the history of grief spirals within the Serenes. "Keiko, we both know I am not going to last. If it happens before this is done… can you complete it for me?" Keiko does not consider herself an angry person, but she is ready to slap Katsuko for saying that with a tone of acceptance. For daring to ask her to do that. Something must have been readable on her face, because Katsuko continued to speak.
"I have grief spiraled four times, that is more than anyone. And eight grief cubes to stabilize me total." Katsuko admits. Keiko glances down at the sheet, admittedly Katsuko was correct. However… "So what, that is only two more grief cubes than the next highest, and all of one more grief spiral. Yeah, it's high, but the last two times have only been one grief cube each. " Keiko is cut off as Katsuko shakes her head.
"I almost died the last time. I've had a four spiral, and before Kaoru found me… it felt worse than a four. If not for her, I would not have come out of it."
Keiko simply pulls Katsuko in tight for a hug, partly to reassure Katsuko. And partly to reassure herself that Katsuko was still there.
"You're still here aren't you? Seems to me that the Law of Cycles has decided you have to stay here and keep me out of trouble. If you ever need to talk, talk to me, Aiko, Mami. Talk to the kittens. But you can't go without saying goodbye, promise?" Keiko prayed to anything that was listening that she was helping, and not…
"Keiko…" Keiko squeezed harder, that was not a promise.
"Do you promise me?"
"Alright, I promise." Keiko blinked her eyes. Katsuko sounded like herself again.
"Alright then, bed." Keiko announced, taking the papers and turning off the light in one quick motion.
"Kei-"
"Bed, because there is no way we are going to convince Mami to give us funding for mice cages at this time of night." In the darkness Keiko could still set Katsuki glance toward the desk. She needed to call Aiko first thing in the morning. Earlier if she could get Katsuki to sleep.
Keiko was not as patient as Katsuko. She was also better at operating past midnight, as she dredged up the one plan that Katsuko had not yet tried. Bodily carrying Katsuko up to one of the multiple abandoned beds, though it did help that she was slightly taller, and enacted a koala by clinging to any limbs that attempted to get out of the bed.
Eventually, Katsuko fell asleep. Keiko was still awake, a little scared to go to sleep, fearful that Katsuko would not be there when she woke up. The next time Kaoru put on a performance, she was getting flowers that changed color. Or something. Keiko owed her, for saving her best friend.
*****
I hope I didn't maul characterization to badly, I think that Keiko could be more serious if the situation called for it, and tried to work her energy into the science segments. Also detailed my idea for several years to decades of research in regards to Serena's magic and how we could use it and get the current girls off their dependency.
Second omake planned with Serena's group, their additions and the problems of Google Translate. Hoping that it will turn out better than this.
I went through the quest for these numbers, and I had originally intended this to be with the motivation being for the memory of Chihoko, our first death by grief spiral. And then I looked through the quest and Katsuko is the character with
both the most GC's used for aversion of grief spirals and total amount of grief spirals. And a GM waved kill spiral.
Turn 28
You had five grief spirals this month. Ayako's was the most severe and for obvious reasons and required 4 units of grief cubes to arrest. Though oddly neither Sora nor Mariko spiraled, it doesn't seem to have actually been that traumatic, more of a blur really. Akeno had a bit of a crisis of usefulness before she got her new job and required two units to stabilize but thereafter seemed to work harder than ever. Kaoru had a minor spiral due to her lingering issues of self-doubt, but helped reduce the severity of Katsuko's spiral with her music, which seemed to cheer Kaoru at least. Sayaka also had a minor spiral this month because of other meguca hurting your girls when they should be protecting people, you're oddly happy to have made such a safe place that that she can have such ideals.
+1
Also as a freebie for being such a terrible length without updating I mitigated your worst grief spiral this month.
And my point of Katsuko comes from this line, as the worst that actually happened was Ayako's for 4 GC, and the only thing worse than a 4 GC is a kill spiral...
