Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 27
I was twenty-seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-nine words into the continuation of
The Patchwork Realms, a number that gave me
indescribably great delight, when the transdimensional doorway opened once more.
I put Flufflec's pen (still wrote perfectly, still had apparently unlimited ink) down and stood up eagerly. It was undoubtedly Josh, come to pay me for the latest two thousand words. We were doing them in batches so that he wasn't constantly shuttling back and forth to the Out—time was a novel concept to him that he apparently enjoyed dipping in and out of, but it was better for my focus if I could do long blocks of writing uninterrupted by joy-bringing Lego-stepping observation.
"Hey, Josh, good to oh my god, Moni?"
It was indeed not Josh In Time come to provide me with vengeful payment. It was instead Monique, more commonly known to me and a few select friends by her diminutive sobriquet, 'Moni'.
The love of my life, left behind in the other world these long ten years.
She smiled that wicked smile that made my heart light up and then we were in each other's arms again.
She was warm, and curvy in just the right places, and she fit against my body just as well as I remembered. She was an inch or two too tall for me to rest my chin on the top of her head but if I tipped up a little bit I could feel her heat against my throat. My hands slipped automatically to their familiar positions at the back of her head and the small of her back, cradling her close and pressing us together as though to meld us into one flesh. Her long hair had its usual flyaways which tickled my nose in exactly the way I remembered. The scent of it was a long-buried, longed-for memory that sent a host of images and experiences and emotions tumbling through my mind.
She was pressing into me just as much as I was pressing into her, clinging tight and making adorable little noises in the back of her throat that signalled a rightness with the world that had been too long absent and was now banished to the nothingness it deserved.
We separated just enough that she could look up and I could look down and we could lock eyes. She was almost as I remembered her but with ten years more smile lines and a touch more silver among the rich mahogany of her lustrous mane that was floofing out behind her in the crisp fall breeze. She wore a new (to me, at least) example of one of her favorite styles: a scoop-neck cream top leading into a wrap skirt in brilliant oranges and reds with brown ankle boots that had been laced in the, shall we say, quirky and idiosyncratic way I remembered.
There was no time for speech because our lips were locked together. Our mouths opened, tongues touching lightly in remembrance and assent. She tasted the way I remembered: heavy cream with hickory smoke was the closest image I had ever managed to bring to mind, yet still utterly inaccurate. All my words, all my skills and experience as a writer, and I could find only lightning bugs instead of lightning to illuminate the heady flavor of her mouth. It made my head go quiet for the first time in ages, everything else falling away as, for a few blissful moments, she became the only thing in my world.
"What are you doing here?" I asked when we eventually separated. My voice was a husky whisper, too lost in her to speak normally.
She smiled, the lines around her eyes crinkling the way I remembered. "I met a demon," she said. "Phil-something. He offered to send me here and I couldn't say no."
I blinked, running numbers. "It's been ten years here...is it the same back home?"
She nodded. "Mm-hm."
"Tobe is...twenty?"
"Just turned twenty-one," she agreed. "Senior at UT, majoring in graphic arts with a focus in video game design."
"They have a major for video game design?" I asked, pulling back slightly in surprise so that I could see her better. I still kept my hands looped at the small of her back; I think part of me was afraid that if I let go then she would disappear.
"It's a focus within the overall graphic arts major," she said. "He's graduating in a few months and he's already got two job offers. Good offers."
"He's got good genes," I said with a grin.
She wrinkled her nose at me. "And he works hard."
"And he works hard. So Phil offered you a trip to here and you said yes?"
She tucked her head back against my chest and squeezed tight. "Mm-hm."
"He offered you a trip to a horrible death world full of murderous ninja where even the food crops are able and eager to kill you. And you said yes."
She looked up at me, not releasing her grip. "Of course."
I couldn't stop my goofy smile, nor did I try. "Did he offer you superpowers in the bargain? We got superpowers."
"Yup. And he let me choose."
"He let you choose?! We didn't get to choose! He didn't even tell us what we were getting, we had to figure it out. How come you're special—wait, never mind, dumb question. Let me count the ways you are special." I leaned down for another brain-quieting kiss, then leaned back again so neither of us was craning our neck. "What did you get?"
"The ability to talk to anything through music."
I blinked. "That's...interesting." The word 'anything' jolted something loose and I looked around, decade-long reflexes making me check for monsters that might be sneaking up on me. Nothing. My perimeter was still secure. Which, in fairness, wasn't that surprising—I am, after all, the best gorram sealmaster in the world and I had prepared this ground when I came out here to write this morning.
"What are you looking for?"
"Nothing, just checking for critters. Why don't we get you back to Leaf and get you a check-up? When I first got here I got crazy sick. Chakra-enhanced germs are no joke. I had to go on this whole stupid quest to get this stupid rock and have it implanted in me to give me a super regeneration ability. It messed with my head something fierce."
She smiled and nodded, then laced her arm through mine and fell in beside me as I set off. Long habit had our steps in sync so that her right hip and my left stayed together the whole time. (Neither of our hips was lying.)
"You don't want to pack your stuff?" she asked, gesturing to the lawn chair and lap desk and sidetable and hot cocoa and and and...
"It'll be fine. I want to get you to Tsunade ASAP."
She smiled and hummed quietly to herself as she followed along.
o-o-o-o
"I don't know why you had to waste my time," the Slug Princess complained. "She's fine. If everyone were this healthy I'd be out of a job. But no, you had to go be an ass, cut into my rounds. I have real patients, you know."
"Shut it, Sunny. I know what you have in the hospital right now. She's important to me, and she's more at risk then any of the boo-boos and bruises you need to kiss and make better."
It had taken years before Tsunade and I had developed our relationship to the point where I felt comfortable talking to her so bluntly and she felt comfortable not punching me through a wall when I did. It was a mix of things that allowed it—had she tried, my reactive armor seals would have blasted her into orbit unless she was making a truly serious effort to kill me by using medical chakra spikes to slip between the firing arcs. (I was still working, on and off, to eliminate that small weakness.) On the other side of the coin, my seals had completely revolutionized medicine in Leaf and saved thousands of lives per year. Byakugan-reproduction seals that allowed any doctor to see their patient in the same detail as a trained Hyūga (that one had nearly gotten me assassinated twice by angry clan members), sleep seals that could safely and instantly knock out a patient, chakra-battery seals that could help ninja keep going in a critical situation without burning their chakra coils through overdraw. The list went on and on and it gave me the privilege of lipping off under certain limited circumstances.
"Yeah, yeah," the grumpy doctor said. She flicked her fingers and the green chakra she had been running across Moni's chest poofed away. "You're fine, girl. Don't gargle mud and you won't have any issues. Honestly, you've got the cleanest bill of health I've ever seen. Most people have at least a little bit of sickness trying to get a foothold in them at any given moment. Not you."
Moni smiled her urchin grin, the one that only came out at playful moments, but all she said was "Thank you." She hummed happily to herself as she reached out and squeezed Tsunade's shoulder in gratitude. "You're very kind."
Touching a ninja, especially a ninja of the Sannin's age and prior mission portfolio, was generally the kind of thing that got you murderized. I tensed up, ready to dive forward and put myself and the aforementioned reactive armor seals between my love and the angry doctor.
Amazingly, Tsunade didn't react with sudden and overwhelming violence. She merely looked at Moni's hand, raised an eyebrow, and looked back at my beloved's face with a thoughtful "Hmmm."
"I'm glad to hear things are good," I said, inserting myself as much between them as I could manage. Moni dropped her hand and Tsunade stepped back to allow me in. "We'll come back if anything changes, okay?"
Tsunade rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Get out of here and stop wasting my time. Honestly." She stumped out of the room, muttering to herself about over-demanding, over-dramatic sealmasters and what a damn nuisance they were.
"So, what would you like to do first?" I asked.
"Picnic?" Moni asked hopefully. "I need to eat pretty soon."
"Sounds good," I said after a moment to think where a safe area might be. "Mama Tanaka sells pre-made baskets. We can pick one up on our way to the city gate."
o-o-o-o
We were halfway to our destination when Moni pulled up short.
"Let's eat here," she said, looking around at the bucolic scene.
It was a beautiful spot. The trees were silver-barked and spaced wide enough that the afternoon sun trickled happily down through their leaves to bring warmth and light. Lush green grass swept like a welcoming carpet down a slight slope to a flowing creek perhaps six feet wide. Birds were singing somewhere in the trees. There were a few holes that were probably home to roly-poly little gophers.
Of course, the trees were silverbarks, the favorite nesting ground for carnivorous acid ants. The trees and the ants lived in symbiosis; the trees' leaves were razor-sharp and the tree could fling them like shuriken at anything that got too close. The carcass would then be devoured by the ants and the ant poop would fertilize the tree.
The lush grass was mostly just grass but there was a large patch of vampire grass mixed in. The stuff would happily grow into you and drain you dry if you sat too long. Its sap had a soporific and anaesthetic effect that would prevent you from noticing the touch of the plant until it was too late. By the time you were aware of your blood being sucked out you were already unconscious.
The birdsong identified them as eyestealers, natural masters of genjutsu that would keep you unaware of the singers until they had come close enough to pluck the eyeballs from your skull.
The gophers were, of course, fire-breathing carnivores.
"Yeah, this isn't the safest spot," I said. I pointed at each of the threats and explained it.
"Oh," she said, looking surprised. "Okay." She began to sing, the way she often did when she was happy. Her repertoire was vast and I usually didn't recognize what she was singing, but I did this time: Mr Rogers' Neighborhood.
I swear to fucking god, the vampire grass fucking pulled itself out of the ground and marched up the slope to our left, leaving a rich carpet of actually safe grass near the creek. The birdsong stopped for a moment, then resumed. The trees swayed, their leaves rustling, and then went still.
And a fucking gopher popped out of its hole and gave us a gorram thumbs up before diving back underground.
"What."
"What?" she said, cocking her head. "I asked them to be friendly and not bother us."
"You...asked them to be friendly and not bother us."
"Mm-hm. Did I see vegetarian spring rolls in that basket?"
Author's Note: Eagle-eyed readers might draw the conclusion that I have a guest in town this weekend and thus could not write an actual update. Said readers are brilliant and perspicacious.
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