World Tree MUSH

    Evening in Tokyo, in a high-rise apartment. Dinner has been eaten, cleaning has been done, and Hyouka is just settling in to watch something from her favorite virtual streamer, glass of sake in hand. It's kind of a quiet night, really; Alty and Leene are charging, leaving the cyborg alone save for her onboard AI companion. And DARGN is pretty content to leave her be, most of the time, rather than engage in idle banter.

    She'd hate to admit it, but Hyouka has gotten used to having someone else living in the apartment. Sure, Serrah's come and gone since she moved in, but this is more than the average by... quite a bit, actually. Long enough that she's a tad worried. But 'try not to worry about it when it's after dinner and you don't have energy left' is a skill Hyouka has long-since mastered from her office days. So... sake and a v-streamer it is.

    There's footsteps near the door, and the sound of the keycard unlocking it ....

    ... and suddenly, the apartment door is open and just starting to swing shut. Serrah's sports bag is in midair falling to the floor nearby, with a pink umbrella covered in red hearts in midair having been tossed there.

    And Serrah is flopped facedown on the couch. "-- would be more of a comfort by now than not having 'a home' but here we are," she's in the middle of muttering into the cushions in Japanese. This is followed by incoherent profanity in English.

    For a second, Hyouka doesn't even register the click of the lock. She's become accustomed to it enough that it merits only a brief passing glance and a mental 'oh, Serrah's home' before her eyes return to the TV screen.

    About the moment Serrah flops onto the couch, it finally registers. "-Serrah?!" She quickly sets her sake glass aside, turning to face the dhampir directly. "My goodness, are you alright? It's been weeks, I was starting to get really worried. Do you need something to eat? Are you hurt? I can-" She seems to realize she's flipping out a little, and reins it back in. "...are you okay?"

    Serrah looks up at Hyouka, startled. "Oh, I ... didn't notice you there," she says lamely. Wow, she had to have been really out of it ...

    She actually chuckles mirthlessly at Hyouka's sudden freakout. "Oh, y'know," she says flatly. "I'll probably be fine. It's just, uh ..."

    She sits up, still leaning against the couch. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, before settling on, "Shit happened, and now I'm kinda ... 'ehh' ... Oh, I grabbed something at that ramen cart ..." She shakes her head. "I finally figured out it was probably a bad idea for me to just ..." In English, "... fucking ..." Back to Japanese, "... disappear like that. Uh. Slightly a long story ..." Her voice trails off.

    She's looking ... medium-levels of sleepy. Not as bad as she sometimes gets, but not fully rested, either.

    'Shit happened.' Someone else might pry, but Hyouka is Japanese enough that she's quite fine with taking that as a hint that Serrah isn't ready to talk about it. For her to disappear that long and come home this exhausted, shit must have indeed happened.

    And seeing her in this state is throwing Hyouka into full-on Mom Mode.

    "You sound exhausted. Here, let me go make you some tea, the water boiler's still on." She's already up and out of her chair, making a beeline for the kitchen area. She's sure she has some herbal teas that would be good for helping Serrah relax a bit.

    "Yeah, thanks," Serrah says absently. She actually takes a moment to relax now. She rubs her eyes, frowning, then stretches.

    She stares moodily off into space for a moment, realizes that she's probably full-on brooding now, and then blinks and shakes her head. "Uh ... so," she says. "I ... might have mentioned I was checking out reports of these undead spirits attacking people ..." (She hadn't.) "... aaaaaand, y'know. It culminated in me helping a nature-kami put a bullet through the head of a giant fuckoff void-reaper ..."

    She has the briefest of hesitations, then says, "But in the process, the void-reaper conjured up a shade of, of Vincent fucking D'Ambrosio."

    "I hadn't heard that one, actually." Despite having been ready to coast the rest of the night to bed, Hyouka is now fairly awake and bustling about the kitchen, prepping the glass and the tea in short order, having the whole thing in the hot water and brewing in around half a minute. Silently thankful for the water boiler, the cyborg shifts to dragging out any sweetener and creamer Serrah might like; by now she's probably seen the dhampir's preference in tea enough to recall it off the top of her head.

    "...I'm sorry to hear that," she says after a moment's pause. Having that particular specter shoved in her face has to have been rough. "You gave it a metaphorical black eye in return, right?"

    Serrah tends to prefer milk and a small amount of honey with her tea. At least, when she isn't having full Japanese-style. But this does not seem to be a Japanese-style evening for her.

    She chuckles, tilting back to look upside-down at Hyouka. "Well, the bullet did the trick!" she says. "Still, it was summoning shades of 'people and things you have killed.' Even if it was just Vinny the Tool, which me and Holly Winn shared -- I think I've mentioned her, she summoned me to take him down -- plus the, the shitton of shades which were from the kami ... it's just ... I got all kinds of, y'know, philosophical, I guess."

    She grimaces. "... whiiiiich kind of led to me going literally AWOL from Port Pixelito, sorry ..."

    Milk and honey are set on the counter, and left there for a moment while the tea steeps. "I can't say I blame you," Hyouka says, leaning against the counter. "On either count. I'm still a little..." She absently reaches up, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "...mm. Well, it wasn't as bad as we were expecting. Maybe they got wind we were coming, but there weren't a lot of troops there. I'd like to think most of them got out."

    There's a faint hint of a frown. "...I don't think I'm going to do another one like that, though. I got this body to be an adventurer. That's... stretching it a bit."

    Serrah nods. "Right, right," she says, weightlessly rising off the couch to shift her position slightly. "That's, uh ... pretty much my feeling on it. I mean, I'm a mercenary like the rest of 'em, I'm definitely no hero." (She says this with just a little too much force.) "But ..."

    She pauses. And then, a timestop later, she's in an entirely different position on the couch and her shoes are now by the door.

    "... Vincent's the only person I've ever permanently killed," she finishes the sentence. "And he was undead, but back when I was a full vampire, killing someone living? Would've done a number on the remaining essence of humanity inside me. By the time we put Vincent back six feet under ... let's just say if I'd killed even one person, I wouldn't've been able to resurrect."

    She shrugs. "Bottom line," she says, "I really don't feel like kicking the habit. I mean, yeah, it happens, sometimes you don't have a choice and someone dies, this isn't a kid's show. And the First Order is full-on space-Nazis." She shrugs. "But I'm not up for racking up a kill-count higher than 'one'. Let alone participating in a goddamn war."

    "Mm." It's a thoughtful noise Hyouka makes, while she listens - and while she considers her own sentiments on the matter. Of course, with the short steeping time on herbal tea, by the time Serrah finishes her thought, the honey and milk are going in. It's only after she brings it over and hands it off to the dhampir, however, that Hyouka puts her thoughts in a coherent string of words.

    "...I'm probably directly responsible for a few deaths by now. On Navarro, for sure, maybe other places. I'm... I try not to think about it much." She shakes her head faintly, settling back on the couch. "...it's not something you think about a lot when you read fantasy stories about adventurers, heroes versus demon kings, whatever. And I guess if I have to, I'd do it again. Especially to protect Alty or Leene. Or other kids, I suppose. I don't know about 'staying out of war', per se, but... I don't think I just want to be another soldier. I don't want killing to be what I'm about. I don't want to get used to it, I think."

    Serrah accepts the tea, nodding thoughtfully. "Stopping time makes it easier to get out of a hairy situations like that, in my case," she murmurs. "But yeah. I guess ... I'm gonna be ... kind of hands-off, myself." She shrugs. "Even ... even in situations where there are full-on gunfights or whatever, I can still just knock people around nonlethally. I've done it before ..."

    She nods. "Yeah, I think your 'what I'm about' thing is the way to go about it," she says. "I'll just ... try ... not to kill anyone. Never been caught alone in these sorts of things, I guess, unless it was because Vincent brought me somewhere. But ... ehh." She smiles weakly. "This kind of philosophy is a bitch, y'know?"

    At long last, Hyouka takes up her sake again, and then chuckles softly. "It really is. Fiction just doesn't prepare you for actually being in this kind of dilemma." She raises her glass up, but before taking a sip, she adds, "I'd still take it over office politics, though." Gulp. A good little swallow of booze. "At least philosophizing, I can just decide where I stand, put my boot down, and then if people don't like how I feel, I can tell them to take a hike. I'd rather deal with that than keeping track of who Tanaka has a crush on, whether Aomura has been talking crap about me to the bosses behind my back, how much credit Yamamoto has been taking for his underlings' work... I really don't miss walking that tightrope just for the possibility of angling for maybe a small raise six months down the line."

    Serrah chuckles, sipping her tea. "Man, corporate sounds almost as bad as vampire politics," she says. "I'd take working in the backroom at the Early Latte over that stuff any day, the worst there was usually Gem Greenleaf giving someone undead or partly-demonic the cold shoulder ..."

    She sighs. "I really ought to poke people, see if we can find out whether the heat in Hartford has cleared yet," she says. "I mean ..." She looks at Hyouka thoughtfully. "Now that I think of it, you weren't involved in killing the Duke, so ... maybe ... if you and Dante, uh ..." Half-formed ideas swirl through her head. "... I dunno, I've been too busy worrying about this goddamn philosophy-nonsense and making unhealthy decisions to make any more plans."

    Hyouka arches an eyebrow, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "Oh my, are you asking me to go see a world I've never visited before, full of fantastical beings, purely to have a look around?" She takes another slug of sake. "Well if you're going to twist my arm, I guess I could go on an adventure. Dante is certainly pleasant enough to work with. Maybe a little bit of a meathead, but that can be entertaining in its own way."

    Serrah snickers, and this time there seems to be some genuine cheer there. "Hey, it may not be just to have a look around," she says. "If the heat hasn't died down yet, you might have to beat feet in a hurry." She shrugs. "Just ... don't try to kill or permanently-kill anyone. It's, uh ..." She's starting to think now. "... the Emperor said that things would 'mysteriously go our way', and that we should stay out of Hartford for a while, but, uh ..." She grimaces. "... he didn't say anything about what would happen if we went there too early, he's such a double-talking bastard," and in English, "goddamn."

    Hyouka taps her chin thoughtfully with the rim of her glass. "Well, it seems to me that if he didn't specify what counts as 'a while', nor what would happen if your estimation of 'a while' differed from his, then you can hardly be held accountable for deciding a few months is enough time, can you? Especially if you're cautious enough about it that you send someone who wasn't involved in the original incident. Double especially if you're just sending us there to get a feel for things."

    She sets the glass aside, then smiles playfully. "One thing office politics do teach you, is how to ask about something without making it obvious you're asking about it. Being circumspect is a survival skill."

    Serrah considers this for a moment, sipping her tea. "... In that case," she says, "I think the obvious place to go is the Early Latte, where I used to work. Or ... I dunno, that's just what my gut says." Now that they're starting on a plan of action, and the prior philosophical issue is more-or-less settled, Serrah's mood has been greatly improved. "Like, I dunno, they probably have ... someone ... watching there, for whatever reason?" ... She's just not very good at making plans.

    This time, Hyouka makes an amused little sound. "We can worry about that in the morning, when you've had some rest. There's no pressing deadline on this, right? Just take tonight to relax." It's not like their plans have to be that complicated anyway, at least until they know what's going on in Serrah's world. But she suspects the dhampir would still benefit from some rest before getting started on any planning. "Look, Elfina's trying spicy human foods for the first time." She gestures with her sake glass at the TV screen, where sure enough, the v-streamer she's watching, a Very Elven(tm) girl with a peculiar accent, is indeed running a 'Spicy Human Foods' stream.

    Serrah opens her mouth to object, given her odd sleep schedule (or lack thereof) ...

    ... but that's the problem right there, isn't it?

    She glances at the pink parasol with hearts. "Y'know, Holly conjured up that parasol for the express purpose of making the sun easier on me," she says, ever one to dance around the issue. "... and ... I mean ... uh ... I could use some rest now, I guess ... yare yare da wa ..." She laughs weakly, trying to play it off, but ...

    Nevertheless, she settles down on the couch and turns her attention to the TV. Soon enough, she's just relaxing and watching the show.