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Squeaking in under the deadline of tomorrow's adventure ...
Title: Reflections, Distortions
Characters: Sae, Reika, and a little bit of Miya, Gunnar, and Ichiro
Warmakers Adventure: 12 and 13.
Word Count: ~3,200
Summary: Reflections aren't always accurate; reflections can be stretched, bent, distorted, depending on the mirror. The same image has infinite possibilities for change.
"Reika, be careful!"
"I am!" Reika's voice calls back brightly, and not entirely convincingly. She barely pauses in her movement, shimmying her little body along the tree branch without hesitation. Behind her, clinging to the tree trunk, Sae frowns, a very old frown for her very young face.
"I can't reach much farther," Sae warns. Her right arm is stretched to its limit, to keep hold of Reika's own right hand. Sae's left arm curls around the trunk to secure them, while Reika's left arm reaches away from it, straining for the clump of pink flowers farther along the branch.
"Almost ... there ..." Reika's movements smear dirt on her dress.
"You could always wait until more of the sakura bloom, and then you wouldn't have to go through all this trouble just to pick some."
"But I don't wanna wait."
A sigh. "Please hurry." Sae frowns at the back of her sister's head.
Anyone watching would see a simple tableau of a young girl holding onto her wild sister, keeping them both balanced and safe. Only the most astute observer would see that it was the other way around - that, while Sae knows how to hold onto the tree to keep them steady, it is Reika who provides the direction for them both to reach for.
*****
As soon as they make the plan to drop off the radar by visiting an onsen in Okinawa, Sae shivers with a premonition of trouble. Not "trouble" on the scale of dragons and threats to the Earth, but the kind of trouble that they are uniquely capable of - eight teenagers with all the energies and hormones that come with their age. And now, there would be no threat to distract those energies.
As she sits neck-deep in steaming water on a beautiful, clear night ... and watches all of that peace and comfort ruined by Rex and his hijinks ... Sae knows that her premonition was true.
Nariko and Kyoko rise up to challenge the boy, and their shouting match across the dividing wall drowns out the soothing sounds of water, even when Sae tries sinking down to her ears.
The only other sane person in the pool, Miya, makes a sympathetic comment. Sae only grimaces in response. She doesn't know what else to say, and she doesn't want to risk projecting her annoyance at Rex onto an innocent.
Undeterred by Sae's silence, Miya continues talking. "My hometown is peaceful like this." She hesitates, glancing in the direction of the others. "Well, not like this," she laughs nervously.
"Must be nice ..." Sae mutters. Then she hits upon an idea. "Tell me about your hometown," she says suddenly. If Miya talks, maybe she'll distract Sae from the noises of god-knows-what over the wall.
And then something unexpected happens. Sae, focusing on Miya's voice in an attempt to drown out the sounds of the others, finds herself actually listening. Comfortably.
Miya is ... different from the other girls. She's a little shyer, a little quieter, her demeanor softened by diffidence. The way she looks up at Sae occasionally, with her slightly hesitant smiles, makes Sae think that maybe Miya is uncertain, too, at being friendly with her teammate.
Miya is like Reika, but with less polish. Reika's friendliness is elegant and gorgeous, sparkling with charm - welcoming to all, yet impossible for someone like Sae to match. Miya's friendliness is a little more raw, and a little closer to Sae's level. She listens to Miya talk about her Protector, the dragon who has watched over her since her childhood. And Sae, who has watched over Reika since their childhood, talks about being a protector, even if it's not with a capital P.
"But it's hard sometimes," she finds herself blurting, no longer concealing her anxiety. "Reika doesn't keep herself out of danger - she treats herself like a human shield for the others -"
Miya nods, and listens. And it's ... nice. Sae talks, and doesn't trip over her own tongue very much. And Miya listens.
"Maybe," Miya says gently, "being someone's protector means learning to watch over them ... and then letting them go."
"Oh," Sae replies, and finds that she doesn't have any more to say.
*****
Something about the onsen turns them upside down, because while Sae is becoming friendly with Miya, Reika is becoming more antisocial.
Reika carries the weight of the leader on her shoulders. She's the one with the burden of always needing to provide the group with a direction, always making a plan, always being right. And now, Filge has captured some of their former allies and threatens them, as well as the Guardians, with the might of the renegade UNARMED.
It's a huge problem, and Sae can understand why Reika feels discouraged by the prospect of handling it. But Sae also thinks that, were she in her sister's position, she would be almost happy to realize that the problem was so much bigger than her. A guaranteed failure is almost comforting, because at least she would know that she wasn't supposed to succeed, so she couldn't be blamed for falling short. Shouldn't it be a relief for Reika to relinquish control and make the others help her out?
Then again, Sae knows that Reika would rather fail as a leader than as a follower, so people would know that she tried. Sae would rather fail as a follower than as a leader, so people wouldn't know that she wasn't good enough. This is one of the ways that they are both similar and different.
The thing is, Reika so rarely meets a goal that she wants but can't accomplish. And she's certainly never faced situations this dire before. Sae hasn't ever seen her under this massive a threat of failure, to make her this massively discouraged. Sae has never been the one trying to bring up her sister's black spirits like this, urging her to spend time with their friends and celebrate.
It scares Sae a little, that things are so different. At the same time, she feels a strange, almost worrisome excitement, over the idea that the two of them can change so radically. She realizes that it's hope.
*****
Of all the people to give the group hope, Sae does not expect it to be Ichiro.
But he does, using both magic and mundane abilities to create a show of lights and music. But it's more than that ... Ichiro uses colors that should be too bright or ugly for a show, brings in sounds that should be too discordant or inelegant to make music, and makes them all fit. Into something that actually works.
And his eyes, keen and brown and burning, meet each of theirs in a piercing, challenging gaze that makes Sae's throat tighten. He asks them to change themselves. To figure out how to make themselves fit. Even if it seems, on the outside, that they can't or shouldn't.
At the end of his performance, Ichiro staggers from the stage, toward Reika. It is obvious now that he is quite drunk and slightly unhinged. Sae realizes, before anyone else, what his intention is. Half of them are too distracted - Kyoko and Rex falling down drunk, Nariko and Miya gazing dreamily at each other, and Reika herself staring sadly at her bowl of ice cream - to notice.
Reika will be surprised, but not, Sae thinks, unhappy. So she won't stop him.
So when Ichiro sweeps Reika off her feet and kisses her, Sae is the only one who doesn't gape at the tableau in bug-eyed shock. Instead, she takes the moment when everyone is looking the other way to covertly wipe her eyes.
No one sees her, and eventually they all drift out of the room, leaving Sae alone in the dark.
Gunnar is the last to leave, and as he stands up he tells Sae to go back to her room as well. "It isn't safe to be here alone."
Sae feels heat rise up her chest and face at those words. Part of her is happy, at the way Gunnar automatically includes her in the group; in his mind, she is just like the other Guardians who should be protected. Part of her is impatient, at the way that Gunnar's inclusion of Sae with the rest of the Guardians separates her from him, denying her competence and refusing to see her as someone who can take care of herself just as well as he can.
The heat in her face shorts a circuit in her brain, and she doesn't say Thank you or Trust me, but instead, "I don't need you to protect me."
She closes her eyes, hoping he can't see her red cheeks in the dark, and curses herself for getting tongue-tied and caring so much about what he thinks of her. Curses him for being someone she wants to be like. Curses him as he shrugs, gets up, and walks out the door.
*****
As they board the plane to Osaka, Sae wonders if Reika will choose to sit with her, or with Ichiro. She finds herself wondering casually, without jealousy; Reika has always made it clear that Sae is her sister and Ichiro is her boyfriend (well, maybe ... sort of), and the two can exist just fine without competing with one another. It also helps that their roles among the Guardians are also separate - Ichiro may be a magical prodigy, but Sae can effectively tear apart any physical threat that approaches her sister.
Reika, of course, chooses neither. She puts Sae and Ichiro together.
Talking to Ichiro terrifies her. Not in the way most people are terrified of the boy, for his fiendish powers and skewed moral compass. Ichiro scares Sae because he's so damn smooth. Even when he's nervous - as he is now, soliciting Sae's permission to ask Reika on a date - his words are well-crafted, his manner effortlessly cool and sophisticated.
His charisma is of a darker breed than Reika's, more about overpowering than charming a person, but it's undeniably powerful. And Sae isn't nearly as familiar with him as she is with Reika, to ease the impact of his personality. It makes her nervous to the point of being afraid, worse than what she feels with anybody else on the team. At least with Gunnar, she can scrape together enough courage to be rude.
So Sae feels a wicked bit of triumph when she informs him of what he did, that night at the onsen, and sees his composure shatter.
*****
In Osaka, they stay at a love hotel. Because it's cheap, anonymous, and can hold all of them. Never mind that it also involves a lot of things that make Sae think of the TV shows they saw in Germany, and the very confusing and somewhat frightening things they talked about. Reika doesn't seem to care about that.
Reika puts Sae in a room with Gunnar.
At least, Sae thinks as she bites her tongue on a protest, Reika has regained her equilibrium.
Sae doesn't sleep much that night, huddled as close to the edge of the narrow bed as she can manage. Although she isn't sure which one she's scared of more: the boy who lies next to her, the curve of his back resting only a few handsbreaths away from hers on the bed ... or the unidentifiable and unnameable bright pink objects plastered with Hello Kitty that are strewn around the room.
*****
Back in her role as leader, Reika reassumes her authority by organizing the Guardians, making sure they all start to work together as a team. She makes everyone inventory their powers and skills, and decide how they can best contribute to the group.
Reika takes a moment to talk to each of them alone, including Sae. When the two of them talk, Reika asks her sister to stop relying on her.
She says it gently, thank god, more gently than the others probably would have expected. Because the others don't know how important it is for Sae to follow Reika, and how hard her request is. So even though a flood of defensive retorts rise to Sae's lips, she bites them back. Reika would never ask this much of her lightly.
It makes sense, what Reika is saying. Sae is a Guardian too, and she should have her own role. But being on her own means succeeding or failing on her own, fulfilling her destiny as a Guardian based on her own merits, not Reika's. Trying to be the good, world-saving hero herself, instead of just supporting Reika as she does it.
Sae tells her that it'll be hard. She also says that she'll try, which makes Reika smile.
They figure out the best way for Sae to contribute to team missions. She can help with a lot of physical tasks Reika can't do, such as infiltration and reconnaisance. She also makes sure to put her name on the list of people involved with tactical planning, so Gunnar can't refuse her help. He'll have to recognize her, dammit.
The rest isn't as easy. Reika reminds Sae that she'll have to talk to the others, not just fight alongside them. And that's a change that takes a lot longer to implement. It is also something, Sae realizes, that Reika has been preparing her for when she threw Sae together with various other team members.
Her first attempt comes when Gunnar asks her to accompany Ichiro, who has gone off by himself to watch a sumo tournament. Their interaction isn't so much talking as lecturing, with Ichiro providing an impromptu lesson on sumo, and Sae listening mutely.
Her second attempt comes when she accompanies Rex to buy the group some snacks. This time, she gets more talking in. But most of the time it's Rex who talks, and Sae who looks at him with a wide-eyed, paralyzed smile, while she thinks, Reika better appreciate this.
*****
During their next battle, Sae almost dies.
It starts off easily enough. Devils infiltrate the Ise Shrine where they were communicating with Gaea, but the Guardians dispatch them without much trouble. Sae fights brilliantly, exulting in the power that flows easily from her body, through her scimitars. If this is what it means for her to be a Guardian, then she can do it, no question.
Gunnar has her protecting half of the team, while he gets the other half - which includes Reika. But Sae accepts it; if he can trust her strength, she must trust his.
But somehow, after their opponents disappear from the battlefield and the Guardians circle warily, trying to locate them, Sae loses control of the situation. She stumbles against a hamatula who appears behind her out of nowhere. The monster's long, spiked arms reach toward her eagerly, undaunted by her attempts to stab her scimitar into its body. It accepts her blows, letting its blood spill from its wounds as it makes only a casual attempt to defend itself, so that it can grab her and drive the protrusions of its own body into her flesh.
Sae attempts to dodge out of its grasp, but those long arms snake around her, lifting and dragging her into its barbed body. For a few crucial seconds, Sae's mind is consumed by a white flash of pain as thin, razor-sharp spines pierce her shoulders, chest, and stomach. By the time she thrashes free, she is half-blind with blood and fear, and the hamatula reaches toward her again.
In terror, she mentally begs for someone to come protect her, and someone does - Reika, putting her own vulnerable and unarmed body in front of her sister's. This isn't how it's supposed to happen.
Reika is rescued, thankfully, before the hamatula can reach her, before she suffers a set of wounds that matches her sisters. But it is close. Too close.
"Sorry," Reika tells her afterward, but she sounds like she isn't really. Sae wants to yell at her, to tell her to never do something like that again. Gunnar, who always yells at Reika for doing this kind of thing, should be yelling, too -
But Gunnar doesn't yell. As he catches up with Reika, he takes her aside for a brief, though serious, talk, and they separate peacefully. All Sae catches of the conversation is Reika saying, in explanation but not apology, "she's my sister." And the angry words fade from her lips.
Miya is there to help Sae, using her dragon-born magic to heal the worst of her wounds. Sae lets the magic work over her body, and watches Reika as she regroups and directs the other Guardians, and thinks.
Reika watches over her sister. She always has.
*****
Afterwards, when she has a moment to herself, Sae quietly strips off her clothing and stands in front of a mirror. She stares hard at the marks on her body, scars left from the damage wrought by the barbed devil, and makes sure she sees them all clearly.
They center on her torso, marking the gashes that went across her stomach and over her ribcage. Some of the wounds overflowed onto other parts of her body, like the one that tracks from above her heart, down her left bicep. In a normal person, this kind of damage would have killed, or at least crippled. But Sae the Guardian survived. And Sae's fellow Guardians used magical energy to heal her, so that even the scars left on her body are lighter than normal.
Lighter, but still there. Her body, once mistakable for that of a normal high school girl - albeit an athletic one who got into a fair number of scrapes - is now irrevocably marked as different.
She should think of herself as ugly. The scars are ugly, the way they discolor and, in some places, deform her skin. Part of Sae's mind recognizes this, that she doesn't look like a normal pretty girl, one who will attract normal handsome boys.
But Sae never wanted to be normal. She wanted to be better. And these scars mark what she can do, better than anyone else. They're even different from the marks that the other Guardians have - Reika's magically blackened hands, or Gunnar's burn scars, or Nariko's archer's calluses. These scars are hers, and they show what she can do just as much as the scimitars she wields. And what she can do is just as good as her fellow Guardians.
She wonders, for a moment, if Gunnar feels this way about his scars. Or if he could.
With one finger, Sae traces along one of the long, pale lines that mar her skin, continuous from her collarbone to her hip. The scar signifies pain, a moment of failure, and a very clearly remembered fear. But it signifies strength. Her strength, and hers alone, which no one else can defeat or replace.
In the quiet, in her solitude, Sae smiles.
So, if one were particularly dorky, one might have imagined this fic representing an "episode" of Warmakers that centers on Sae's character development, the way that a lot of anime series dedicate an episode to individual character introspection. There would be a lot of artistic still shots and blank screens with text, a la an episode of Honey & Clover or Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou. The text would be anonymous, yearning questions, such as What does it mean to be different? and How do I change myself without you? And maybe the opening scene, with young Reika and Sae, would be echoed in a closing image of two hands, larger than children's, letting go of each other.
But only if one were particularly dorky. ;)
Title: Reflections, Distortions
Characters: Sae, Reika, and a little bit of Miya, Gunnar, and Ichiro
Warmakers Adventure: 12 and 13.
Word Count: ~3,200
Summary: Reflections aren't always accurate; reflections can be stretched, bent, distorted, depending on the mirror. The same image has infinite possibilities for change.
"Reika, be careful!"
"I am!" Reika's voice calls back brightly, and not entirely convincingly. She barely pauses in her movement, shimmying her little body along the tree branch without hesitation. Behind her, clinging to the tree trunk, Sae frowns, a very old frown for her very young face.
"I can't reach much farther," Sae warns. Her right arm is stretched to its limit, to keep hold of Reika's own right hand. Sae's left arm curls around the trunk to secure them, while Reika's left arm reaches away from it, straining for the clump of pink flowers farther along the branch.
"Almost ... there ..." Reika's movements smear dirt on her dress.
"You could always wait until more of the sakura bloom, and then you wouldn't have to go through all this trouble just to pick some."
"But I don't wanna wait."
A sigh. "Please hurry." Sae frowns at the back of her sister's head.
Anyone watching would see a simple tableau of a young girl holding onto her wild sister, keeping them both balanced and safe. Only the most astute observer would see that it was the other way around - that, while Sae knows how to hold onto the tree to keep them steady, it is Reika who provides the direction for them both to reach for.
*****
As soon as they make the plan to drop off the radar by visiting an onsen in Okinawa, Sae shivers with a premonition of trouble. Not "trouble" on the scale of dragons and threats to the Earth, but the kind of trouble that they are uniquely capable of - eight teenagers with all the energies and hormones that come with their age. And now, there would be no threat to distract those energies.
As she sits neck-deep in steaming water on a beautiful, clear night ... and watches all of that peace and comfort ruined by Rex and his hijinks ... Sae knows that her premonition was true.
Nariko and Kyoko rise up to challenge the boy, and their shouting match across the dividing wall drowns out the soothing sounds of water, even when Sae tries sinking down to her ears.
The only other sane person in the pool, Miya, makes a sympathetic comment. Sae only grimaces in response. She doesn't know what else to say, and she doesn't want to risk projecting her annoyance at Rex onto an innocent.
Undeterred by Sae's silence, Miya continues talking. "My hometown is peaceful like this." She hesitates, glancing in the direction of the others. "Well, not like this," she laughs nervously.
"Must be nice ..." Sae mutters. Then she hits upon an idea. "Tell me about your hometown," she says suddenly. If Miya talks, maybe she'll distract Sae from the noises of god-knows-what over the wall.
And then something unexpected happens. Sae, focusing on Miya's voice in an attempt to drown out the sounds of the others, finds herself actually listening. Comfortably.
Miya is ... different from the other girls. She's a little shyer, a little quieter, her demeanor softened by diffidence. The way she looks up at Sae occasionally, with her slightly hesitant smiles, makes Sae think that maybe Miya is uncertain, too, at being friendly with her teammate.
Miya is like Reika, but with less polish. Reika's friendliness is elegant and gorgeous, sparkling with charm - welcoming to all, yet impossible for someone like Sae to match. Miya's friendliness is a little more raw, and a little closer to Sae's level. She listens to Miya talk about her Protector, the dragon who has watched over her since her childhood. And Sae, who has watched over Reika since their childhood, talks about being a protector, even if it's not with a capital P.
"But it's hard sometimes," she finds herself blurting, no longer concealing her anxiety. "Reika doesn't keep herself out of danger - she treats herself like a human shield for the others -"
Miya nods, and listens. And it's ... nice. Sae talks, and doesn't trip over her own tongue very much. And Miya listens.
"Maybe," Miya says gently, "being someone's protector means learning to watch over them ... and then letting them go."
"Oh," Sae replies, and finds that she doesn't have any more to say.
*****
Something about the onsen turns them upside down, because while Sae is becoming friendly with Miya, Reika is becoming more antisocial.
Reika carries the weight of the leader on her shoulders. She's the one with the burden of always needing to provide the group with a direction, always making a plan, always being right. And now, Filge has captured some of their former allies and threatens them, as well as the Guardians, with the might of the renegade UNARMED.
It's a huge problem, and Sae can understand why Reika feels discouraged by the prospect of handling it. But Sae also thinks that, were she in her sister's position, she would be almost happy to realize that the problem was so much bigger than her. A guaranteed failure is almost comforting, because at least she would know that she wasn't supposed to succeed, so she couldn't be blamed for falling short. Shouldn't it be a relief for Reika to relinquish control and make the others help her out?
Then again, Sae knows that Reika would rather fail as a leader than as a follower, so people would know that she tried. Sae would rather fail as a follower than as a leader, so people wouldn't know that she wasn't good enough. This is one of the ways that they are both similar and different.
The thing is, Reika so rarely meets a goal that she wants but can't accomplish. And she's certainly never faced situations this dire before. Sae hasn't ever seen her under this massive a threat of failure, to make her this massively discouraged. Sae has never been the one trying to bring up her sister's black spirits like this, urging her to spend time with their friends and celebrate.
It scares Sae a little, that things are so different. At the same time, she feels a strange, almost worrisome excitement, over the idea that the two of them can change so radically. She realizes that it's hope.
*****
Of all the people to give the group hope, Sae does not expect it to be Ichiro.
But he does, using both magic and mundane abilities to create a show of lights and music. But it's more than that ... Ichiro uses colors that should be too bright or ugly for a show, brings in sounds that should be too discordant or inelegant to make music, and makes them all fit. Into something that actually works.
And his eyes, keen and brown and burning, meet each of theirs in a piercing, challenging gaze that makes Sae's throat tighten. He asks them to change themselves. To figure out how to make themselves fit. Even if it seems, on the outside, that they can't or shouldn't.
At the end of his performance, Ichiro staggers from the stage, toward Reika. It is obvious now that he is quite drunk and slightly unhinged. Sae realizes, before anyone else, what his intention is. Half of them are too distracted - Kyoko and Rex falling down drunk, Nariko and Miya gazing dreamily at each other, and Reika herself staring sadly at her bowl of ice cream - to notice.
Reika will be surprised, but not, Sae thinks, unhappy. So she won't stop him.
So when Ichiro sweeps Reika off her feet and kisses her, Sae is the only one who doesn't gape at the tableau in bug-eyed shock. Instead, she takes the moment when everyone is looking the other way to covertly wipe her eyes.
No one sees her, and eventually they all drift out of the room, leaving Sae alone in the dark.
Gunnar is the last to leave, and as he stands up he tells Sae to go back to her room as well. "It isn't safe to be here alone."
Sae feels heat rise up her chest and face at those words. Part of her is happy, at the way Gunnar automatically includes her in the group; in his mind, she is just like the other Guardians who should be protected. Part of her is impatient, at the way that Gunnar's inclusion of Sae with the rest of the Guardians separates her from him, denying her competence and refusing to see her as someone who can take care of herself just as well as he can.
The heat in her face shorts a circuit in her brain, and she doesn't say Thank you or Trust me, but instead, "I don't need you to protect me."
She closes her eyes, hoping he can't see her red cheeks in the dark, and curses herself for getting tongue-tied and caring so much about what he thinks of her. Curses him for being someone she wants to be like. Curses him as he shrugs, gets up, and walks out the door.
*****
As they board the plane to Osaka, Sae wonders if Reika will choose to sit with her, or with Ichiro. She finds herself wondering casually, without jealousy; Reika has always made it clear that Sae is her sister and Ichiro is her boyfriend (well, maybe ... sort of), and the two can exist just fine without competing with one another. It also helps that their roles among the Guardians are also separate - Ichiro may be a magical prodigy, but Sae can effectively tear apart any physical threat that approaches her sister.
Reika, of course, chooses neither. She puts Sae and Ichiro together.
Talking to Ichiro terrifies her. Not in the way most people are terrified of the boy, for his fiendish powers and skewed moral compass. Ichiro scares Sae because he's so damn smooth. Even when he's nervous - as he is now, soliciting Sae's permission to ask Reika on a date - his words are well-crafted, his manner effortlessly cool and sophisticated.
His charisma is of a darker breed than Reika's, more about overpowering than charming a person, but it's undeniably powerful. And Sae isn't nearly as familiar with him as she is with Reika, to ease the impact of his personality. It makes her nervous to the point of being afraid, worse than what she feels with anybody else on the team. At least with Gunnar, she can scrape together enough courage to be rude.
So Sae feels a wicked bit of triumph when she informs him of what he did, that night at the onsen, and sees his composure shatter.
*****
In Osaka, they stay at a love hotel. Because it's cheap, anonymous, and can hold all of them. Never mind that it also involves a lot of things that make Sae think of the TV shows they saw in Germany, and the very confusing and somewhat frightening things they talked about. Reika doesn't seem to care about that.
Reika puts Sae in a room with Gunnar.
At least, Sae thinks as she bites her tongue on a protest, Reika has regained her equilibrium.
Sae doesn't sleep much that night, huddled as close to the edge of the narrow bed as she can manage. Although she isn't sure which one she's scared of more: the boy who lies next to her, the curve of his back resting only a few handsbreaths away from hers on the bed ... or the unidentifiable and unnameable bright pink objects plastered with Hello Kitty that are strewn around the room.
*****
Back in her role as leader, Reika reassumes her authority by organizing the Guardians, making sure they all start to work together as a team. She makes everyone inventory their powers and skills, and decide how they can best contribute to the group.
Reika takes a moment to talk to each of them alone, including Sae. When the two of them talk, Reika asks her sister to stop relying on her.
She says it gently, thank god, more gently than the others probably would have expected. Because the others don't know how important it is for Sae to follow Reika, and how hard her request is. So even though a flood of defensive retorts rise to Sae's lips, she bites them back. Reika would never ask this much of her lightly.
It makes sense, what Reika is saying. Sae is a Guardian too, and she should have her own role. But being on her own means succeeding or failing on her own, fulfilling her destiny as a Guardian based on her own merits, not Reika's. Trying to be the good, world-saving hero herself, instead of just supporting Reika as she does it.
Sae tells her that it'll be hard. She also says that she'll try, which makes Reika smile.
They figure out the best way for Sae to contribute to team missions. She can help with a lot of physical tasks Reika can't do, such as infiltration and reconnaisance. She also makes sure to put her name on the list of people involved with tactical planning, so Gunnar can't refuse her help. He'll have to recognize her, dammit.
The rest isn't as easy. Reika reminds Sae that she'll have to talk to the others, not just fight alongside them. And that's a change that takes a lot longer to implement. It is also something, Sae realizes, that Reika has been preparing her for when she threw Sae together with various other team members.
Her first attempt comes when Gunnar asks her to accompany Ichiro, who has gone off by himself to watch a sumo tournament. Their interaction isn't so much talking as lecturing, with Ichiro providing an impromptu lesson on sumo, and Sae listening mutely.
Her second attempt comes when she accompanies Rex to buy the group some snacks. This time, she gets more talking in. But most of the time it's Rex who talks, and Sae who looks at him with a wide-eyed, paralyzed smile, while she thinks, Reika better appreciate this.
*****
During their next battle, Sae almost dies.
It starts off easily enough. Devils infiltrate the Ise Shrine where they were communicating with Gaea, but the Guardians dispatch them without much trouble. Sae fights brilliantly, exulting in the power that flows easily from her body, through her scimitars. If this is what it means for her to be a Guardian, then she can do it, no question.
Gunnar has her protecting half of the team, while he gets the other half - which includes Reika. But Sae accepts it; if he can trust her strength, she must trust his.
But somehow, after their opponents disappear from the battlefield and the Guardians circle warily, trying to locate them, Sae loses control of the situation. She stumbles against a hamatula who appears behind her out of nowhere. The monster's long, spiked arms reach toward her eagerly, undaunted by her attempts to stab her scimitar into its body. It accepts her blows, letting its blood spill from its wounds as it makes only a casual attempt to defend itself, so that it can grab her and drive the protrusions of its own body into her flesh.
Sae attempts to dodge out of its grasp, but those long arms snake around her, lifting and dragging her into its barbed body. For a few crucial seconds, Sae's mind is consumed by a white flash of pain as thin, razor-sharp spines pierce her shoulders, chest, and stomach. By the time she thrashes free, she is half-blind with blood and fear, and the hamatula reaches toward her again.
In terror, she mentally begs for someone to come protect her, and someone does - Reika, putting her own vulnerable and unarmed body in front of her sister's. This isn't how it's supposed to happen.
Reika is rescued, thankfully, before the hamatula can reach her, before she suffers a set of wounds that matches her sisters. But it is close. Too close.
"Sorry," Reika tells her afterward, but she sounds like she isn't really. Sae wants to yell at her, to tell her to never do something like that again. Gunnar, who always yells at Reika for doing this kind of thing, should be yelling, too -
But Gunnar doesn't yell. As he catches up with Reika, he takes her aside for a brief, though serious, talk, and they separate peacefully. All Sae catches of the conversation is Reika saying, in explanation but not apology, "she's my sister." And the angry words fade from her lips.
Miya is there to help Sae, using her dragon-born magic to heal the worst of her wounds. Sae lets the magic work over her body, and watches Reika as she regroups and directs the other Guardians, and thinks.
Reika watches over her sister. She always has.
*****
Afterwards, when she has a moment to herself, Sae quietly strips off her clothing and stands in front of a mirror. She stares hard at the marks on her body, scars left from the damage wrought by the barbed devil, and makes sure she sees them all clearly.
They center on her torso, marking the gashes that went across her stomach and over her ribcage. Some of the wounds overflowed onto other parts of her body, like the one that tracks from above her heart, down her left bicep. In a normal person, this kind of damage would have killed, or at least crippled. But Sae the Guardian survived. And Sae's fellow Guardians used magical energy to heal her, so that even the scars left on her body are lighter than normal.
Lighter, but still there. Her body, once mistakable for that of a normal high school girl - albeit an athletic one who got into a fair number of scrapes - is now irrevocably marked as different.
She should think of herself as ugly. The scars are ugly, the way they discolor and, in some places, deform her skin. Part of Sae's mind recognizes this, that she doesn't look like a normal pretty girl, one who will attract normal handsome boys.
But Sae never wanted to be normal. She wanted to be better. And these scars mark what she can do, better than anyone else. They're even different from the marks that the other Guardians have - Reika's magically blackened hands, or Gunnar's burn scars, or Nariko's archer's calluses. These scars are hers, and they show what she can do just as much as the scimitars she wields. And what she can do is just as good as her fellow Guardians.
She wonders, for a moment, if Gunnar feels this way about his scars. Or if he could.
With one finger, Sae traces along one of the long, pale lines that mar her skin, continuous from her collarbone to her hip. The scar signifies pain, a moment of failure, and a very clearly remembered fear. But it signifies strength. Her strength, and hers alone, which no one else can defeat or replace.
In the quiet, in her solitude, Sae smiles.
So, if one were particularly dorky, one might have imagined this fic representing an "episode" of Warmakers that centers on Sae's character development, the way that a lot of anime series dedicate an episode to individual character introspection. There would be a lot of artistic still shots and blank screens with text, a la an episode of Honey & Clover or Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou. The text would be anonymous, yearning questions, such as What does it mean to be different? and How do I change myself without you? And maybe the opening scene, with young Reika and Sae, would be echoed in a closing image of two hands, larger than children's, letting go of each other.
But only if one were particularly dorky. ;)