Update time once more, bringing in the rework of the scene that gave me so much trouble a few weeks back. Changes in the setting, characters and quite a bit of conversation and tone have happened, and deciding to omit a short (by my standards) recollection of the spar itself has truncated and sped things along quite nicely. I'll leave that last point to the reader's imagination, guided a little bit by the physical details in this scene.
Two more scenes to go for this chapter, although one of them could turn up lengthier than usual. And after the whole thing's done, I'll be taking some time off to work on another chapter to my AU. The last chapter that I plan on devoting to it, incidentally.
And depending on how
that goes, I might have another announcement to make during the summer. We'll see.
Chapter 7.3
"Thank you for your concern Asuka-san, but I'm fine, really," Hikari Horaki tiredly replied to the question that had been on everyone's minds since a few days before. The young woman then continued to gently scrub at her arm, the warmth of the bath water effortlessly washing away the accumulated dirt of a hard day's work. "I just haven't been sleeping all that well lately. It's really nothing to worry about."
Her redheaded friend shot Hikari a disbelieving look, submerging her body into the blissful heat as much as she could with a cast around her right arm. A dislocation suffered during her latest mock-fight that the younger Horaki had seen fit to not heal immediately via her abilities.
"You do realise that saying it's nothing to worry about has the exact opposite effect on people, right, Hikari?"
The brunette didn't offer an immediate answer to Asuka's rhetorical question, instead closing her eyes and sighing deeply, the displaced air creating small ripples on the water's surface.
"Hey, I'm not going to bug you about it if you don't want to," Asuka quickly added, easily inferring that the topic in question wasn't high on Hikari's list of wants. "It's just that it was your first time watching the results of actual combat, and I've seen people coping badly with that stuff before. I don't want my friend going through that on her own, so just know that if you want to talk, you can tell me and I'll do what I can."
At that, the brunette raised her eyes once more with a relieved breath, this time sporting a small smile on her face.
"Thanks, Asuka."
The young mercenary nodded, mostly satisfied, although she didn't miss the fairly noticeable hint of melancholy lining her friend's words. Not that there was much of anything that she could do about that without Hikari being cooperative, short of finding something else to talk about that would end up lifting her spirits.
Easier said than done, considering the situation of the castle town and that Asuka herself had been sleeping and out of the loop until just recently. Thankfully for the younger Horaki, however, Asuka Sohryu wasn't a woman known for giving up.
Determined, the redhead scoured her mind for topics she could use and, surprisingly, came up with something far quicker than she had expected. The fact that inspiration had struck from something Hikari had just said probably had something to do with that.
"Hey," Asuka said, smirking confidently. "You didn't use the '-san' this time around."
"Huh?" Hikari looked back at her friend weirdly, considering what she meant until her brain caught up with her unintended mistake. "Ah! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
The redhead quickly cut off the rushed apologies with a wave of her good hand, indicating that she didn't mind in the slightest.
"It's fine, it's fine! I actually prefer it like that, honestly. All those honorifics that you guys are so stubborn with sound pretty silly to me." Hikari blinked, not really following the logic behind Asuka's words. Seeing this, the redhead elaborated. "I mean, friends should just call each other by their names, right? The whole honorific thing makes it sound like you're keeping people at a distance, or something."
Now fully understanding what her friend was saying, the brunette sighed softly and shook her head.
"Sorry, it's just customary. I didn't want for it to come across like that, though."
"No worries. Can you to try and drop them when you're talking with me, though? I'll feel more comfortable like that, I think, and I'm sure that you'll be thinking the same before you can realise."
Bringing her gaze to the side and grabbing hold of a lock of wet hair between her fingers, Hikari pondered the proposal for a few moments. It wasn't long before she reached a decision, nodding at her friend with a smile.
"Okay, if you want me to;
Asuka."
"Good girl." Asuka smiled back.
The sudden sound of a sliding door and footsteps coming closer cut into any further attempts at conversation and, curious, both young women turned to look at the source of the disturbance.
"Oh, Horaki-san, Sohryu-san. I didn't realise that the bath was in use," said disturbance spoke, clad in nothing but a cloth towel and a small patch covering their left eye. "Would you mind my joining?"
"I-Ikari-dono?!" Hikari all but jumped up at the sight of Rei Ikari, splashing water all around her. Still in shock, the young brunette quickly looked between the waiting Lady and her friend (who was now openly scowling at the new arrival), before her survival instincts took hold of her actions. "D-Don't worry, my Lady, I was just leaving! You can have my spot!"
"There's no need for you to-"
"Please, I
insist, Ikari-dono!" Hikari hastily cut her off, bringing up the sweetest smile she could muster. "I would
love nothing but to stay a bit longer, but I've got
so many things that I have yet to do before the day's over! By all means, don't worry about myself and use this opportunity to relax, my Lady. G-Goodbye!"
Her words resounding within the bathing area, the drops of water left behind by her movement barely had enough time to rejoin their brethren before Hikari Horaki was out of the room, the sliding door closing behind her equally as quickly.
Blinking as she stared at the shut door and listened to the faint sounds of Hikari frantically making her exit, Rei eventually sighed sadly and slowly made her way towards the water.
"...Wow. She totally ran away," Asuka drily commented with a raised eyebrow, as Rei discarded her towel and made her way into the bath, making herself comfortable in the water. "Shame on you, Blue; you scared her off."
Grabbing hold of some nearby cleaning utensils, the bluenette started in on her brushing before properly responding to the redhead.
"I would wager that Horaki-san was more scared of your usual reactions than anything else, Sohryu-san."
"Bite me," Asuka shot back, scoffing. "What are
you doing here, anyway?"
"Bathing, obviously."
"I can
see that. Don't you high and mighty nobles have a bath of your own, though?"
"No, we don't. That would be an unnecessary expense, which I believe is answer enough." Pausing in her scrubbing for a second, Rei made eye contact with the young woman in front of her before she next spoke. "I imagined that you would have already inferred as much, Sohryu-san, or have you already forgotten the debacle of your first day in Akuro?"
Asuka winced in embarrassment at the words, the event that Rei was referring to suddenly and unwillingly making it to the forefront of her mind.
"...I
had until you brought it back up.
Thank you."
"You're welcome."
For a fleeting moment, Asuka considered getting up and leaving Rei alone in the baths, but that course of action was quickly and ruthlessly shot down. Not out of any desire to tolerate the young Lady's presence (or even worse,
willingly spend time with her), but rather because doing so could be easily interpreted as Asuka running away from the situation.
And that just simply wouldn't do. Not around her nemesis, and certainly not at that time.
And so, Asuka remained inside of the warm bath water for far longer than she had initially intended while Rei went about keeping up proper hygiene. Asuka was fairly confident that her fingers would end up wrinkling because of her actions, but that was a low price to pay all things considered.
A much bigger problem presented itself when Asuka realised that there was surprisingly little to do in a bath once you were done cleaning yourself. At least, when she had company and humming or singing weren't much of a viable option.
In her hidden boredom, the redhead couldn't help but sneak some glances at the bathing bluenette, swiftly determining with some surprise that what hid under Rei's loose fitting clothes was a lithe body just like her own, albeit less muscular and with slightly more generous proportions (annoyingly enough). The part that drew Asuka's attention the most was certainly the girl's pale skin, however: smooth and with nary an imperfection that she could spot, almost like a doll's, and
very soft to the touch from what she could tell.
Asuka would hardly consider herself plain but, despite her best efforts, there was only so much she could do to take proper care of many parts of her body. Her own skin, for instance, was a far cry from Rei's after years of heavy workouts and rough travelling, and she seriously doubted her mane could ever compete with the sheer silkiness of her counterpart's hair.
To be completely honest, it made the girly part of her seethe with envy, on top of all her other Rei-related problems.
'Yet another thing that I'm not good enough at,' the young redhead inwardly sulked, her mind instantly reminded of her appalling performance some time before.
'How am I going to become a world-renowned heroine like this? How am I going to put her to shame when the time comes if I can't get that far? This isn't how it was supposed to go!' Asuka's blue eyes then focused sharply on her bathing companion, all pretext of subtlety thrown to the wind, and her left hand balled into a tight fist on her lap.
'And why does she
get to have such stupid luck in the draw, anyway?! She's a damn noble! It's not like she did or suffered through anything
to deserve it! This is so unfair...'
"Please refrain from staring so intensely, Sohryu-san," Rei abruptly spoke, making the redhead jump in surprise. "It is uncomfortable, and I have no interest in the connotations of such an act."
"C-Connotations? The hell are you talking about?" Asuka replied, covering the embarrassment at being caught and her depressing train of thought with her usual antagonism. "I don't swing that way, not that there's anything wrong with it."
The enmity behind her discourse was met with the frigid wall of Rei's usual indifference, however, the bluenette continuing on her efforts with no sign of having even heard Asuka's words. A fact that, coupled with the downward spiral of her thoughts, left the young mercenary feeling more angry and frustrated than she had been in a very long time.
Anger that she saw very little reason not to take out on its source.
"It must be
so nice, though, being able to live
such a cushy life. Having no worries other than busying yourself with menial tasks and keeping everyone at your beck and call." Asuka's scathing remarks caused Rei to stop in her actions, her red eyes slowly turning to regard the redhead. Opportunity that Asuka used to turn up the heat further. "I mean, that brother of yours and your mom at least have that whole 'ruling the land' thing going for them, but what do
you even do around here, other than pamper the guy and creep people out?"
Her words filled with malice, Asuka fully intended to bait Rei into an argument or, even better, an actual fight, the consequences of which were somewhere in the back of her mind and being completely ignored. The young redhead had a single objective at that time: to veer her mind off the awfully familiar path that it was taking, no matter what.
But, much to the redhead's chagrin, such a development didn't actually come to happen.
"You may be right, my current efforts are clearly lacking," Rei replied, her expression turning pained and disgruntled. "It's no wonder that Mother is losing her patience with me. In most aspects, I am little more than a hindrance to her and Shinji as I am."
"H-Huh?"
"I am hopelessly behind where I should be," the bluenette continued, unaware of Asuka's shocked reaction to her agreement. "That must be why you so easily wrestled control of the initiative from me during our spar. No matter what Katsuragi-san says, it was clearly your victory, and-"
"Victory?! Don't give me that crap!" the redhead furiously interrupted, quickly standing up and towering over a stunned Rei. "It's obvious that the only reason I even managed to lay a finger on you is because you were an
idiot, so save your goddamn
pity! I've got the best military training in the world and plenty of combat experience, but none of that
matters because of you assholes and your magical
bullshit! I am the useless one in this place!"
Asuka's words reverberated all over the small room, followed shortly after by the sound of her heavy breathing. Her hands were balled even tighter than they had been before in a clear sign of the unrelenting nature behind her fury. The redhead, however, couldn't tell at the time whether she was angry at Rei for daring to think her pathetic enough to deserve her pity, or at herself for blurting out her insecurities at the one person she didn't want to appear weak before.
'Goddamit, Asuka. You and your big mouth.'
Seconds passed without any further word from either woman, lost in thought as they were and not really daring to look at each other for fear of complicating the situation even more. The both of them remained as such until, eventually, the shroud of heavy silence was pierced by an eerie and terrifying sound. One that would take years to fade from Asuka's psyche:
The laugh of Rei Ikari.
"...Is that so?" the young Lady spoke slowly and gravely as her mirthless chuckles died off, her eyes hidden by the fringe of her hair. "It would appear that we are both useless, then."
Rei's assertion went without argument, for the redhead found herself unable to act or speak, and barely able to even
think, in the face of something that she had deemed to be about as likely as Shinji growing an actual backbone.
"But that doesn't necessarily have to remain so," the bluenette continued, a determined glint passing through her eyes as she pushed herself up and out of the bath under Asuka's flabbergasted scrutiny. "As such, I would like to make a proposal to you, Sohryu-san. One that should prove beneficial to us both."
Finally managing to regain enough control over her brain functions to push Rei's bizarre behaviour out of her mind, the young mercenary's expression shifted towards wary interest, the shock having proven enough to erase most traces of her previous near-murderous rage.
"...Speak."
"Let us continue sparring from here on out, even after fulfilling Katsuragi-san's instructions," Rei explained, walking back to the clothing racks with Asuka a few steps behind her. "It is clear that my approach to fighting intelligent opponents lacks... finesse, and you could certainly use more experience in facing magic users."
"Yeah... That trade looks heavily skewed in your favour, Blue," Asuka replied with a shake of her head, having considered the offer for a few seconds. "After all, other than the people in this place, what are the chances of me finding myself in front of another of you overpowered weirdoes? You yourself said that mages are very rare, remember? And I don't think that whatever Katsuragi's doing is everyday knowledge, either."
"Magic users are not common, indeed, but we simply don't know what we'll be facing in our future encounters with the Apostles. We cannot be too careful."
The redhead narrowed her eyes at the bluenette's response, not having failed to identify an important-sounding term that she was unfamiliar with.
"...Apostles?"
"Yes." Rei confirmed, turning to look at her curiously, "Did Mother fail to mention them? What we met in the underground facility and what we believe was controlling you would both be part of such a group."
"Yeah... She didn't tell me anything about that." Asuka crossed her arms, eyes narrowing at the memory of her conversation with Yui. "Then again, she didn't say much of anything other than:
'That's not for you to know at this time.
'"
"...I see."
The young woman went really silent after that, although it didn't take someone of Asuka's intelligence to tell what was going through Rei's head. After all,
'I hope I haven't messed up' was pretty much written all over the face of her nemesis.
It wasn't long before the bluenette shook herself out of her worries, however, quickly focusing back on the topic at hand by throwing Asuka an expectant look.
"Do we have an agreement, then?"
Asuka contemplated the offer for all of one second, before slowly nodding her head in assent. She would take
any opportunity to mend her earlier mistakes, after all, and having the chance to cave in the face of her nemesis while she was at it was a welcome extra to the offer, as well.
...
...Or would that be 'rival', now?
"I guess we do," Asuka replied, before fixing the young Lady with the most intimidating look that she could muster. "But just so you know, next time's not going to go like the last! I'm going to
crush you so hard and so quick you'll have trouble telling up from down for three days straight!"
"I would expect nothing less after your consent, Sohryu-san," Rei coolly shot back without the slightest hint of panic. "To give our agreement anything less than your best would be nothing short of insulting."
Asuka scoffed at the other girl's demanding response, although a well-hidden feeling of relief also washed over her at the return of her usual high and mighty attitude. Quietly and without paying much attention to the other, both girls changed back into their clothes and prepared for whatever the day had left to offer them.
