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If there was one thing Ryuko didn’t miss before her time as the Guitar Case Drifter, it was household chores. Even the fancy, distant boarding schools she’d been shuffled between before ditching academics entirely had a chore wheel in the dorms, to ‘promote responsibility’. As if it wasn’t just busywork and forced socialization.
The Mankanshoku household expected every resident to contribute to it. Since it wasn’t exactly like Ryuko could pay rent, it was the least she could do.
The smell of bleach and fabric starch curled her nerves, and after nearly setting the house on fire Mrs. Sukuyo cheerfully banned her from the kitchen, but there were other things Ryuko was pointed at. Mechanic work for appliances and the truck that was more replacement parts than original.
Helping Mr. Barazo… handle his patients.
Ryuko wrinkled her nose as she lifted bloodstained hands from where she’d been pinning some dumbass who came in with a stab wound. Mr. Barazo ended up digging a spoon out of the patient’s gut, so who knew what kind of stupid bar brawl the sorry bastard had gotten into.
Gross. Ryuko wasn’t squeamish in the slightest, but Spoon-Guy’s blood reeked. Probably the booze.
Mr. Barazo seemed unaffected- made sense, given the stench that regularly wafted down Honno Town from the canals- as he put away his tools and dragged a cooler closer to where he sat, humming brightly.
“Wait a sec- is that a kidney?” Ryuko didn’t gawk- honestly she couldn’t bother to pretend to be shocked, given how Mr. Barazo had introduced himself as a back-alley and definitely unlicensed doctor.
Mr. Barazo slammed the lid down at the end of his whistled tune. “Sure is! The guy couldn’t pay cash, and it’s the madame’s birthday soon, so I’m gonna get her something nice- like that cast iron set she'd been eyeing!”
Ryuko guessed he didn’t mean the kidney was the present. Presumably. Who knew with this family.
“Maybe I should get her something too…” Ryuko mused, standing up from her awkward crouch and stretching before making her way to the water bucket to wash her hands.
Not like she needed to worry about Spoon-Guy. She might have knocked him out a little after he nearly kicked Mako’s dad in the gut. He’d be fine. Probably not even concussed.
Okay, maybe the guy nearly decked Ryuko too- knocking him out was just practical.
--
Mako, still half-asleep from the tram ride home, perked up instantly when Mom's pot full of mystery croquettes crashed into the center of the dinner table like a meteor strike. Just as tasty as usual, but less usual…
"Oh, hey, is that the kidney present?" Ryuko mumbled around a mouthful of croquette, leaning closer to Mako in order to avoid the cramming Mataro and Dad's enthusiasm brought to the table.
"There's a kidney in there!?" Mataro sputtered- but didn't actually spit out his own croquette, even if it did get a little lodged inside his airway. Food was food, after all!
Dad's bellowing laughter was only barely loud enough to overpower Mataro's choking. "Naw, just paid for by a kidney!"
Without looking, Mom smacked Mataro's back as if dispatching a dying fish, and the stuck croquette vanished down his throat. "Kidneys are quite popular during the first week while everyone up at Honnoji sorts out their pecking order! It paid for the electric bill too, if you would believe!"
Huh, that was a coincidence! One of Mako's no-star classmates on the bus to school had been complaining about his dad- a protection racketeer for the local gang, a perfectly respectable profession- somehow losing track of his kidney in a bar fight.
"Or maybe because of the Biology Club guys. Weird fuckers have been snooping around the Pre-Med Club enough that I bet they're desperate for more material," Ryuko mused; quieter than usual, but lately she'd been bristling like static-charged wool less and less.
Her new and only best friend didn't feel fully at home still, but she'd get there soon enough if Mako had anything to say about it!
--
Even if she didn't feel fully at home, Ryuko fit seamlessly into the Mankanshoku routine nowadays. Her futon was rumpled and cotton-lumpy between Mako and Mom, since space was such a premium, but it never really mattered much when Mako woke up with Ryuko wrapped around her like a warm sweater every morning. It almost made her friend's embarrassment-dyed insistence on keeping her school uniform under the covers like a teddy bear seem less strange.
Having a pretty girl practically sharing a futon with Mako was nice enough on its own, but lately nothing quite made her more feel warm- and very sleepy, like her friend's skin leeched all the restless energy from Mako's own- inside than the very fact that Ryuko was comfortable enough to cuddle up to her at night.
Ryuko didn't even stir from her octopus-wrapped position when Mako slid her free hand under night-loomed hair, stroking against the nape of the other girl's neck.
Rough as homespun wool, star-spiked scars rippled beneath Mako's gentle touch. Wonder where they came from…
Well, that didn't matter! Just that whatever caused such weird marks was long behind Ryuko.
--
Ryuko had lived the life of a drifter long enough to learn its lessons well. And just as she was smart enough to sleep with her belongings on her person or crammed between herself and a wall, there were people stupid enough to try and steal from her anyway.
So when she heard unfamiliar whispers and the bamboo-groan of feet stepping on all the squeaky spots of the Mankanshoku’s floor, she was awake in an instant.
The cadence of those footsteps, lopsided in a way that suggested the person carried something long and heavy, was unknown. So was the muffled-wool vibration of not-sound that hummed from tensed nerves.
That blood-scent, bleach-bitter with the crappy diluted antiseptic Mr. Barazo used on patients, was not unknown.
Spoon-Guy was back, and this time he'd brought a friend.
"Found 'em," the first voice whispered; quiet, but not that quiet, why couldn't any of the others hear it- "Think they stashed your bits somewhere?"
"Doubt it," the other voice snorted, dust-soft and getting way too close to the first futon in the row for comfort. "Bet the fuckers used one of their brats as a fence for the Honnouji club freaks."
Two of them, adult, likely men judging by the voices, and definitely armed.
Shit. Waking up was instant, sure, but getting up was a different story. It always took time, precious seconds of her brain shrieking at her body to get up, for Ryuko to kick her sluggish heartbeat to waking levels of circulation so she could actually move.
If the Mankanshokus ended up getting robbed or something because of Ryuko's fucked-up metabolism, she was going to track the intruders down and break their faces instead of just their arms.
While Ryuko chanted to herself to get up, get up, get up, the first set of boots scraped on the cheap plastic tatami as their owner sidled along the wall, step by step, to where Mr. Barazo snored like a clogged woodchipper.
The second set of boots clunked heavily, loudly, when they caught on something soft.
"Ack! Hey, what gives!?" Mataro squawked indignantly, because apparently the idiot tripped over him.
Mataro's indignation faded like cinders as he craned his head up to squint at the silhouette looming over his futon. A silhouette holding a crowbar. "Oh, fu-"
Ryuko, body warming with rage and rapid blood flow both, warm enough to finish waking up, threw off her futon covers and lunged.
One blink, and her palm was covering Crowbar's jarred expression.
Two blinks, and Crowbar's skull creaked satisfyingly under Ryuko's hand as she slammed him hard enough into the drywall to make a face-sized dent.
Three blinks, and someone was screaming. Someone turned the overhead lamp on, and Ryuko squinted the bleach-blighted light-spots out of her eyes at the sudden brightness.
"Ryuko!" Senketsu's not-voice cried out to her like the tug of a seam-ripper at her veins. From all the way across the room, where she'd left him in her reactionary lunge instead of taking the split second to at least tie his sleeves around her shoulders for a boost.
They'd only barely gotten the hang of wearing-and-being-worn a few days ago, after Satsuki rolled up wearing that quietly silk-hissing thing that made Ryuko and Senketsu's shared stitches pull taught in disgust. Senketsu could move independently now, but only barely- and he certainly wasn't mobile enough to slither across the room to Ryuko.
Without that repeating feedback loop of pure energy, as if Senketsu was the final connective knot on the life-tapestry that Ryuko never knew was unfinished, she was just as flimsy as any unworn human. Damn.
Screw it, she'd won scraps with even worse odds than this long before she met Senketsu. It just hurt like a bitch, because you can't dodge everything when a pack of idiots tries to jump you just because you broke their buddy's legs, or whatever-
Every snarling imprecation untangling from Ryuko's thoughts froze, pain-starched into paralysis, when crooked fingers snatched her bangs and pulled.
When Ryuko had been a child, she fidgeted constantly- still did, really. Boarding school teachers' admonishments for 'quiet hands' never stuck, and even after confiscating anything Ryuko could stave off twitchy fingers with, she'd made do. The friction of her uniform shifting beneath her hands. Nibbling at the ends of chronically-thin fingernails, with the occasional bloody mishap when slipped and bit into her own skin instead. Spooling her hair around her fingers and focusing on the difference in texture between silk-cool black and coarser blood-strands- and how the nerve-red locks seemed to tug directly beneath her skull, as if they were rooted deeper than the rest of it.
That was nothing compared to the razored net of nerves that cut into her brain, threaded lava down her spinal cord and pooled pain that curdled and heat-flashed like spoiled blood into her limbs-
Ryuko lost her grip on Crowbar, yanked back by her scalp. Whirled around, mindless to the bristle-sharp tearing sound of entire chunks of hair ripped out. Mindless to anything except that this thing was a threat to herself and her hosts.
Head ringing with the swearing of the Mankanshokus and the cloth-frayed pain radiating from beneath the front of her skull, Ryuko lunged for his exposed neck and sank her teeth into clammy flesh.
The intruder released her hair just as tangy blood seeped over Ryuko's tongue, scrabbling at her in a panic and bleating like a dying deer. "Wh'th'fu- get this crazy bitch off me!"
Ryuko just clenched her jaw and bit down even harder at the crook of his neck- she'd missed his throat, dammit- until she felt muscle fray between her incisors like fresh leather between scissor blades, felt the enamel-smooth scrape of her eyeteeth striking bone. Wait, collarbone- too deep-
Clang!
Spoon-Guy's hands fell away from where they desperately clawed at her, and Ryuko flinched at the bell-rung vibration of metal-on-skull that traveled all the way down the man's bones- including where her teeth were buried.
Teeth aching like she'd been sawing them on guitar strings, Ryuko wrenched herself from her jaw-lock and shoved the unconscious man away, where he fell in a bloodied heap at the feet of Sukuyo Mankanshoku.
Chest heaving and nose burning with the blood-veiled stench of adrenaline, Ryuko could only stare.
"Phew, thanks Mom!" Mako cheered from where she and her father were pulling the first intruder out of the wall. The very thin wall, where Ryuko had thrown him into in a panic. Whoops.
Sukuyo hefted the slow-cooker lid with a sunny smile that suggested she cared equally little for both the conspicuous wet stain on her appliance, and for the fact that her teenage charge had nearly ripped a man's throat out like a feral animal.
Reacting with abrupt violence was a natural thing, a practical thing, especially in this Darwinist's wet dream of a city, but scrapping with fists and improvised bludgeoning weapons and switchblades was one thing. This was something different. Less… socially acceptable, even though it never made sense to Ryuko when the result was the same; just as vicious, just as bloody.
Ryuko cared little about societal norms and all the invisible guardrails that seemed to guide everyone else. But she did care about what the Mankanshokus thought about her- and not just because she'd been living under their roof for nearly two weeks.
Conspicuously aware of the pressure of- of muscle or fat or something stuck between her teeth, the tang of blood crusting sour over her tongue and face and even down the front of her pajama shirt, Ryuko covered her mouth with uncharacteristic shyness. "Um- oh shi- shoot, Mrs. Mankanshoku, I'm so sorry, that was- okay it was a bit too much even if you're fine with offing the guy, I should've just punched him or something…" Her frantic scramble for an explanation trailed off in the face of Sukuyo's unaffected calm, into a rather lame excuse of, "... I used to be a biter when I was a kid?"
"I wouldn't worry about it dear. Disposing of a dead body wouldn't have been all that different than just an unconscious one." Sukuyo waved her off casually.
Which, what the hell. Still, Ryuko really needed to stop being so surprised about her host family.
"Uh… if you say so." Not that she would know any better- Ryuko tended to just leave anyone she'd knocked out where they had dropped.
"I do say so. Now, Mataro, Barazo, dear? You already know where this mess goes."
"But what if I don't wanna," Mataro whined, apprehensively eyeballing where Mr. Barazo poked at Spoon-Guy's already-coagulating bite wound. "It's all leaking and gross."
"... Uh, I can help?" Ryuko offered- if it was any other building, she wouldn't care, but she was the one who made a bit of a mess
"Mataro will help Barazo get rid of the bodies," Sukuyo said, tone exactly the same as her previous request, but bowed low under the weight of maternal authority. "You, however, will be sitting down and letting me take care of that."
"That?" Ryuko questioned absentmindedly, more interested in finding where Mako had moved to- ah, there she was, rooting around the battle-tossed blankets and futons. She sighed, combing her hair out of her face and ow, ow, ow, the bastard had yanked hard enough to tear her scalp. "Shit, yeah, that."
Flushed warm with fading adrenaline and more than a little embarrassment, Ryuko allowed herself to be shuffled into the kitchen and directed to sit atop the counter. The way her bare ankles tapped against the wood-peeling cabinets made her feel shorter and younger than she actually was, in a way that reminded her of Dad distracting her with a stress ball and probably-embellished stories about his inventions as he drew blood from a tiny elbow splayed across fancy granite tabletops.
Ryuko crossed her arms with a thread-thrumming grumble- and then hissed like steam when Mrs. Sukuyo pressed an antiseptic-soaked rag onto torn skin.
She still didn't move, though. Ryuko was perfectly capable and perfectly practiced in cleaning herself up after a nastier scrap, but this was… nice, maybe. Despite the chemical stinging.
"Ooh, yikes, that's a nasty one." Mako's sympathetic voice, sweet and bright as acid-bubbles, pulled Ryuko's attention to her friend at the doorway rather than the burning irritant.
"I've had worse. Those guys were just lucky, getting the jump on us," Ryuko blustered.
A spidered, linen-raspy voice emerged from where something dark was wedged underneath Mako's arms. "I do not find that encouraging, Ryuko."
Ryuko brightened, despite the inevitable fretting she'd have to endure; her friend and second skin brooded just as much like a chicken as he did like a moralizing overthinker. "Senketsu!"
Mako unfolded Senketsu and passed him into Ryuko's outstretched hands. "I had to dig around for it, but I figured you would want to wear something that doesn't look like you killed a guy and hid the body!"
Last word given, Mako bounced back into the living room.
Ryuko, conspicuously aware of the red that washed down her neck, drying tacky and bright as a venomous animal's warning-stripes, looked down to her blood-bibbed pajamas. Rolled her tongue across sharp teeth, because the salt-taste of blood had faded to nearly nothing, but that was because she'd already swallowed the source of the taste reflexively.
It did, indeed, look like she killed a guy and hid the body.
Without looking away from her ministrations, Mrs. Sukuyo gently tilted Ryuko's chin back up. "Hm, it's already scabbing up… Just don't reopen it, and it won't need bandages. So, you're free to go."
"Thanks. You… didn't have to," Ryuko said awkwardly, sliding down the countertop and onto her feet to hover awkwardly beside Mrs. Sukuyo as she packed away the first aid kit.
"You're a sweet girl, Ryuko, but I did have to," Mrs. Sukuyo hummed; which wasn't something most people called Ryuko, and especially not something they would call her after she'd nearly bitten a man's throat out like a junkyard guard dog. "I do it for everyone in the family, no matter what the reason they got hurt."
Bruise-faded longing, a feeling Ryuko thought she'd completely buried by middle school, yawned vast and heavy in her chest. "Wait, is that meant- Does that include me too?"
"Of course it does.” Absently, as if it were long habit only she remembered establishing, Mrs. Sukuyo brushed bangs and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Now be a dear and help Mako with the futons- being in the family means family chores, too."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, so long as it's not washing the dishes," Ryuko muttered heatlessly as she left the room, head ducked to hide the warm flush that had to be crawling across her face.
"Part of the family, huh?" Ryuko said under her breath, rolling her thumb across what looked like a sailor scarf but were actually sensor-antennae. "That goes for you, too."
“… I am glad you found us both, Ryuko.”
“Yeah. So am I.”