Chapter Text
Kanade would not have waited any longer.
“Honestly, I don’t care if the two of you are coming or not,” She declared, her voice still soft, but with a husky undertone that Mizuki could not get accustomed to if given a million years, “Yuki and I are going b-back to Harmonia next week. You two can come if you want.”
As if to prove her determination, she tugged on Mafuyu’s hand, making her flinch and then nod with lowered eyes.
“There is… a hermit conference happening in Wonenburg soon,” Kanade continued, “I was invited… in my mother’s stead. And of course, the House of Asahina…”
Mizuki saw Ena glance at them out of the corners of their eye, at a loss for words. Ena’s eyelashes were long, glistening under the setting sun, its soft orange reflecting off the shining spires of the city of Neutrona. There the four of them stood, on the Marble Promenade, the wind swishing down from the coast and bundling up Ena’s creamy brown hair, a beauty that not even this amalgamation of two cities could—
“Mizuki?!” Kanade snapped, driving Mizuki out of their stupor. Seeing Mizuki’s sudden panic, she softened her eyes and her voice again. “Sorry. It’s up to you two, Enanan, Amia. I’d love it if you could come with us though.”
Kanade swept her left hand over her horns, and then ran it through her now-short hair, cut by Mizuki’s own hands, her hand trembling as if she believed, even for a second, that Mizuki and Ena’s answers would be no.
When faced with something like this, what could they say?
“Why, of course, Miss K,” Mizuki said in a gently mocking tone, bowing slightly in front of the three of them. “Us hermits will always follow our leader. It is… as certain as the horns on our head. Right, Enanyan?”
“Oi!” A hand struck their side, but it wasn’t with the intention of doing damage; it never was.
“Y-yes,” Ena’s voice continued, slightly shakily after that, “Of course we’ll come, Kanade. We should always be a unit from now on.”
“Thanks, you two,” Kanade’s closed eye smile was magical. Then, like a beacon, her eyes shot into the sky, finding the sun amidst a flurry of clouds. Mafuyu, who seemed to not even be listening, rubbed the bandage wrapped around the top of her head.
“It’s getting a little late. Why don’t we discuss it a bit more tomorrow? Things… should be a lot better now that the war is over.”
Mizuki nodded. Kanade turned to return to the hospital, where they were staying, with Mafuyu; Ena muttered something about meeting someone, and with her head held a little too high than would be natural, marched off towards the end of the promenade.
That left them. Mizuki stretched their arms, and glancing at the edge of the city, where the architecture of this major Protonian city melted and molded into a distinctly Arcadian architecture, a symptom and souvenir of the war that had just ended. They hadn’t had the time to check it out yet. What better time than now?
Ignoring the pain in between their shoulder blades, Mizuki let two massive wings sprout from their back, jet black and bristling in the Neutronan breeze. With a tremendous flap, they lifted into the air.
A special hermit power, as Mizuki had so proudly told her fellow hermits. Achieved when they were ultimately in tune with the heat energy flowing through them and their horns. They didn’t remember when they first received this ability, but that unlimited shapeshifting was a gift that they would not have traded anything in the world for.
Later that evening, Mizuki returned to their shared hospital room to find a fuming hermit.
“And then, they had the audacity to say that my horns looked fake!” Ena complained with a huff, her shoe tapping anxiously on the Function’s wooden floorboards, befitting the government building’s antiquated appearance. “Then, they said that hermits should be good with alcohol! I… I…!”
“Oi, oi, there are patients sleeping nearby,” Mizuki warned her, though their teasing tone did not disappear one bit, “Rin-chan didn’t let us stay in the hospital wing to be a nuisance, you know?”
“You—” Ena started again, but realized her mistake. She crossed her arms and sat down on her bed, the metal creaking slightly, and turning away from Mizuki towards the strange steam measuring machinery in the borrowed hospital room.
Mizuki chuckled. Ena had had the misfortune of going to the Yule Tavern’s temporary Neutrona location with Saki after they split from Kanade and Mafuyu, and they had returned with Saki nearing tears of laughter. Ena, predictably, was the opposite.
“Hey, come on,” Mizuki sat down next to the hermit, who had puffed her cheeks out, “Your horns are the realest I’ve ever seen. Realer than mine, yeah?”
Seeing Ena sneak a glance at them, Mizuki tensed the muscles in their head. And then — they couldn’t see it, but they could feel it — with a small ache, they retracted their horns into their head, until there was only perfect pink hair on their head. A perfectly normal human.
They smirked at Ena, who gave the world’s tiniest smile.
“...Show-off,” She turned away again.
“Pfft, you’re just jealous you don’t have these special hermit powers!” Mizuki flourished, and in an instant, made their horns reappear on their head. Then, they held their hands up in front of them, furrowing their brow slightly to prepare for another transformation.
“Hey, Enanan, look!”
“What?” Ena looked so unamused.
“Do you think Kanade would say my hands are good for steam keyboard playing?”
“Look how stubby your fingers are, I bet—”
Five extra fingers sprouted from each hand.
“Get the hell away from me, Akiyama!”
Quickly restoring their hands and almost doubling over in laughter, Mizuki shielded themself with their arms as they took a few more gentle hits from Ena.
“Ena-sama! I apologize!” Mizuki choked out between laughs, receiving a slightly more amused huff as they stumbled out of their shared room, still chuckling. Turning the corner around the doorway, they almost crashed straight into a short blonde girl in a grimy lab coat.
Mizuki couldn’t see her face, but the huge stack of documents and equipment she was carrying had gently bumped into them, so the girl knew she had hit something. But Mizuki could immediately tell that it was Rin, the director of the hospital wing.
“M…Mizuki…?” Rin’s trademark uncertain voice came from behind the huge pile, making it sway for a moment before Mizuki quickly steadied it.
“Yoho, Rin! Need a bit of help?”
“Yes please…”
Glancing back for a moment to see if Ena was seeing this act of compassion, Mizuki grabbed the heartlyzer, a strange looking instrument with two small measuring pieces, and the temperature interface, its tubes and valves almost bursting off its metal face. That cleared a lot of the burden from Rin, who now folded the documents that remained under her arm.
“Thanks, Mizuki!” Rin wiped some sweat from her head, her fingertips almost looking like they were melting.
“Take more trips next time, Rin! Instead of overwhelming yourself…” Mizuki started, but as they took a good look at Rin, they realized Rin looked tired.
And not just in the way that was apparent they just carried something two times their size. Her soul looked tired, the eyebags under her eyes looking like they needed months of Ena’s calming energy from her horns to dispatch; it was a bit of a dissonance from her usually emotional, uncertain, but slightly cheery personality. A million thoughts ran through Mizuki’s mind.
Rin must’ve realized they were staring, or she was observant enough to see Mizuki’s eyes narrow, and she giggled.
“What’s up, Mizuki? Is there something on my face?”
“No, no, it’s nothing,” Mizuki stuck their tongue out, dispelling as much as they could. “Where do you want me to put this?”
“Come! Come with me for a sec!”
And before Mizuki could react, Rin pointed in some imaginary direction towards the end of the hospital wing, and was already leaving. A look into the hospital room showed Mizuki a curious Ena, who gave Mizuki a hesitant nod.
Mizuki thought Rin was just carrying the equipment to a nearby room, perhaps for set-up for a new patient, but they found themself following the doctor into the elevator in the Function, a gargantuan mass of cogs, wires, and tubing.
“So, I was thinking, with heat energy, we could power the ‘mold’ of the machine,” Rin pulled a lever, pressing a button that read “1” on a bronze panel on the wall, “Would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?”
“Mhm,” Mizuki nodded back absentmindedly. Their heat energy theory was severely out of practice; they had lost track of what Rin was talking about around twenty steps ago.
“Ehehe, thanks, Mizuki! I just hope it works… I—”
The elevator roared to life, drowning out any more scientific jargon Rin was about to throw out. Rin just smiled instead, bouncing her head to some imaginary song, most likely one of Miku’s, Mizuki surmised.
When they reached the bottom floor, with the large marble columns and pair of huge wooden doors at the end of the Atrium, they found Len struggling with a backpack around his size, trying to stuff a metal steamsoul pigeon into the side pocket.
“Hey hey, Len, we’ve got more stuff!” Rin bounced over with Mizuki following closely behind. Rin pointed to a spot on the ground, and Mizuki put the pieces of equipment down with a slight clatter, earning a slight “mm!” from the doctor. As Rin and Len moved to shove the heartlyzer into the largest pocket, Mizuki raised an eyebrow.
“...You’re leaving?”
Rin glanced back at them for a moment, her eyes shining.
“Yeah, Mizuki. Just for a bit though, we’ll be back soon.”
“For what?”
“Research expedition!” Now, it was time for the temperature interface.
“...what about Kanade’s father? What about the other patients? Will…” Will you be okay? But it seemed Rin could read their mind.
Rin let go of a particularly thick tube, and stood up, her head barely reaching Mizuki’s nose.
“Mizuki, I’m going to go try something, and I really, really, really hope it works. I heard from Kanade, by the way. You guys are leaving soon too, aren’t you? And you know, this research expedition…” She wiped her hands on her lab coat, making it even dirtier, “Maybe I’m also hoping to find myself, you know. Figure out who I really am.”
Mizuki immediately knew they had said too much. But, Rin hadn’t been wrong yet. They had been reluctant before; Neutrona was a safe haven they had not had in a very long time. But at that specific moment, they were willing to give it a try.
Almost in a trance, Mizuki’s hand went up to gently touch their horns, the ones they had so painstakingly morphed back onto their head. To figure out who they really were.
Rin wiped her melty hands on her coat again, and winked at Mizuki.
“Advice comes rarely to those who wait! Ehehe.”
Rin’s smile morphed into Ena and Kanade quietly planning their route northwards on a map pinned in Kanade’s room in the hospital room while Mizuki and Mafuyu watched, and then morphed again into the platform at Neutrona Station, the sun barely in the sky.
The bag strapped to Mizuki’s back felt a bit heavier than they were used to, resisting the urge to shapeshift into something that carried the load a bit better.
The steam-powered train was already waiting in the station, painted gold with some stripes of blue and white, the typical Protonian colours. In another lifetime, maybe Mizuki would have been entranced by how steam engines worked, but today, they just chugged with a rare sense of purpose.
There was a small group of people here to see them off. Saki, clutching the cassette player she always carried around, and some of the Neutronan Knights: Haruka, who still looked a little conflicted, her Scout armour heavier than usual; Airi, who had just gotten back from a short excursion, her repulsor still around her waist and pressure pistols loaded in her holsters, had arrived with Ena, who evidently had just returned from a trip to the graveyard; and An, her Enforcer’s valve rifle strapped to her back, looking at Mizuki with tears in her eyes.
“Hey, be back soon, yeah?” The Enforcer said, running a hand through her star-highlighted hair and then patting Mizuki on the shoulder. “The Knights here are already short-staffed; you and Mafuyu-san leaving kinda suck, you know.”
Mizuki spied Mafuyu talking in slow, hushed tones with Kanade, their hoods already on, even though Kanade didn’t need to hide her horns in Protonia.
“‘Course, An! Don’t worry,” Mizuki winked, and morphed their hair to add little yellow star-shapes, mirroring An’s, who gave them a toothy smile and a chuckle.
And of course, standing near the back of the platform, was Rui in all his glory, hands in his pockets. Mizuki gave him a wave just as Ena was pulling Mafuyu, with Kanade’s help, onto the train. He flashed his cat-like smile, and then dusted off his hands, leaving the platform without anyone in the crowd noticing.
As the train gently pulled away from Neutrona station, with some trepidation, Mizuki released a breath that they hadn’t known they were holding.
“I hope we do get to come back soon,” Ena piped up idly, almost as a throwaway thought. Kanade absorbed it in silence, her lip pursed, not agreeing or disagreeing. Mizuki, badly, wanted to ask for details on the conference, but a shuddering part of them thought that just one secret wasn’t enough to lighten the load on Kanade.
Mizuki spied their own reflection in one of the windows as the steam-powered development receded into deciduous overgrowth. With a blink, they dispelled the stars in their hair. Almost by second nature, they reformed the horns on their head.
But they felt a bit off. Something told them, perhaps it was because they were a bit tired, but their left horn was just a millimeter or two to the left. They tried again, but they overshot, making their horns look delightfully lopsided.
Mizuki tried a few more times, but the ache in their head grew heavier with each attempt. Sighing, they dispelled their horns as well, turning back to Ena and Kanade, who were trying to convince Mafuyu, who was staring blankly, to tell them her thoughts on this trip.
It had been almost a year since the war ended, since they had come to Neutrona. But they always travelled as a unit. Today was no different.