Ko stood on the doorstep and looked around; It was quiet and things were peaceful. She took a breath and rubbed the back of her head, staring at the unfriendly wood.
It will be alright. Her sword told her.
Ko grimaced and raised a metal hand to knock, tapping the door and then waiting in the summer night.
Within the dwelling, the sound of a startled infant starting up begins, although it is swiftly dampened and lulled off back into restive contemplation, if not actual sleep. It's followed by the noises of someone carrying something coming along a wooden floor in metal boots, a fairly distinctive noise even if one didn't have Ko's excellent hearing. The latches being drawn take a lifetime and a half, but not long enough for the babe nor its other mothers to stir. Leastwhys it certainly would seem so.
The light from the streetlamps as the door slides out of barring the way illuminates two sets of blue eyes, one set rather larger than the other of course, in equally curious and unexpecting pale faces. Although Cauren's lights up significantly at seeing Ko, while her daughter just looks quizzical and bats effetely at the empty space between herself and the mithril clad samurai of the stars. Gleaming and all but glowing like just those energy giants in all their blazing warmth, the giant waves her old friend in, only pausing to register the Look after a full five heartbeats-and-a-smile had passed her by.
Ko entered and bowed her head, looking up at Cauren grimly. She'd have given anything to have a happier reason for dropping in.
"Bonjour, Cauren... Hey there, honey." She said, smiling warmly at her daughter. That much she could manage, anyway. "Sorry to come at such short notice... Did you get my letter?" She asked, rubbing her hands together to warm them up.
"I'm not entirely sure. Which one?" Cauren asked with some small confusion, and gestured sheepishly at a small mound of paper in a corner of the room. "I've been meaning to read everything sometime, I just... severely underestimated the attention to detail a family requires."
"Not to put the blame on the babies for that. Our little angels are just doing what comes naturally and half the attention split is on their moms really anyway- but you didn't come here looking like that to hear me gripe or brag about this."
It is not a question, and as she rocks the little girl, the white haired woman in the odd ensemble of bath robes and war boots takes a seat at the desk after waving for Ko to as well. "I take it there was something important in that letter? Is there someone you need me to help you kill? I'll just wake one of them to watch the little ones, leave them a note and we can be right off/"
"No, no, I understand. I only wrote that I was coming in, I thought you deserved to hear it from my own mouth." Ko said, standing to attention unconsciously. "I wish it was just something to kill, I've damn near- darn near, sorry- had my fill of that." Ko said wearily. She looked Cauren in the eye and readied herself to finally receive her well deserved punch.
"...Ceneric died in the Brawl to a Vampire's bite. They had to be sure he wasn't coming back as one of the Undead, so they made sure he... Isn't coming back at all." Ko's gaze didn't drop, but she bowed her head to Cauren. "I'm so, so sorry, Cauren. He's gone, under my stewardship. They did it respectfully and with the best of intentions, but you missed the funeral. I'm so sorry." Ko repeated.
She stood there, her shoulders dropping, worn and tired. She wouldn't dishonor Cauren or Ceneric by looking away or falling out of attention, but she didn't have any happy tidings to offer. Only bad news.
Cauren would have dropped her arms to her sides if she wasn't holding a child and even then, in her seat, she seemed quite smaller all of a sudden and more limp, somehow, less animated and more wooden with the onset of realization and loss. Her huge eyes well up as her face goes down, chin buried almost into her neckline and décolletage. Unhappy with the unexpected dripping on her face and mommy's uncustomary noises, the hitching of her breath and shuddering of the large form surrounding her, the baby starts into a full on set of shrieking wails herself that the other seven soon join in on, rudely awakened from their own slumbers.
Lights go on in other chambers as muffled voices curse in surprise and sleepy anger, although not terribly distinctly.
When she's done looking caved in for a moment, the white haired woman stands, staggers a step toward Ko, and grips her shoulder for physical support as much as emotional before her voice leaks out in ragged chunks. "He was my only blood family I didn't m... make. Ko, Ko how, Ko-?"
The grip tightens, and were it steel instead of Mithril, it is entirely possible it might have crimped. "I thought you two were safe together. What if I lose you next?"
That punch Ko was expecting comes, to the ribs, though from a desperately scared woman whose ensemble is soaked through with face leaking, not an angry dishonored knight. "Don't you -dare- die too. No, no no no no"
Ko reached out and hugged her tightly, holding on to her like she was drowning. "Me? Frag, no. Not now and not ever, I promise. But you can hit me again if you'd like, I deserve it. I failed your little brother. He entered the Brawl with a magic kitten and some other animals, and I just fought on my lonesome. Cauren, I'm sorry. I let you both down..."
"Listen- no one is safe right now. Everything is getting bad, out in Vegas, and I'll stop it if it kills me. But don't worry about me, okay?" Ko said, hugging her tighter still. "I'm too damn stubborn to ever die permanently, no matter what's after me. I'm just so sorry about your little brother, Cauren. I showed him so much, I was sure he'd be able to pull through and place well... But it ended differently." Ko murmured sadly, finally letting her go.
The lithe lady did not let go in turn, although her grip faltered. "I said I would be there to watch you two. I should have been there to be sure you came back. It-... they needed shots but I should have made-"
"It's my fault, Ko........"
"What? No, it's not. That much I promise and I'm sure of, you had no ill in this sad affair. If there's anyone to blame it's me, front and center. Your brother deserved a better teacher, then he'd still be alive." Ko said bitterly, taking her back in her arms. She'd take as long a hug as she could, even if it made her feel small and selfish, given the circumstances.
"...Damn, I've missed you. I've missed you so much. I wish I had something better for you than this, but... I thought you deserved to know from me, and I wanted to tell you personally. Not in a letter, but face to face."
"I can't thank you, not for that, not with this. I -can't-, as much as it pains me. But I've missed you too and... I ... can't blame you. Not any more than either of us can blame who actually killed him- and the ones that kept him dead. Who? Who were they?"
Anger is slowly drying her eyes.
"...Remilia, the scarlet maiden. He took 34th. The King of Beasts staff were the ones who made sure he didn't return as a vampire. Knowing another Undead now, I'd have rather kept him around."
"It was the Brawl, Cauren. Sometimes people don't come back. I'm just sorry it was your little brother." Ko said, bowing her head.
The listless woman stared at her bowed head dully. "There's no one to blame? Nothing we can do?"
"Ko, I love you dearly, but I think... I think I may need to mourn alone right now," she woodenly, stiffly, mumbled and curled up in the chair, bouncing the child absent mindedly and staring into the middle distance. "...for some time..."
Shuffling feet.
"Okay, the magnificent seven are back in the land of dreams...is Sarai (pronouced sarah-eye) being a stub again?" Sine is wearing a bathrobe and fluffy slippers in the shape of strawberries.
"Only a little bit of one. She actually settled down for a few minutes until we got a visitor," Cauren brushed under the child's neck and fluffed Sarai's hair a bit when she'd stirred from regretful repose enough to register the redheaded owner of those feet. "She took the news Ko brought better th-than me."
"She's still trying to get to sleep, bless her, and not all that fussfully either."
She then gestures, a trifle more lively than before. "Ko's in. I should have warned you for pants if I thought you'd come out."
Sine: Well I wasn't going to until the rest of the babies awoke...okay, how bad is the news, I can see how domino chains work.
The mutter is small and quiet enough that if Sine weren't used to prising answers out of her giant when she got in a shy or apologetic mood already would probably been utterly unintelligible if it was even audible, but to this such-trained ear, registered as the five words
"She
"Said
"Ceneric
"Is
"Dead"
-and not in any sort of way that suggested it was a manner of kobber-dead, or as the Princess Bride might joke, 'mostly-dead', but the 'All-Dead' 'Really Dead' "Really Most Sincerely Dead" variety.
Sine is quiet for a bit. "....how did this happen?"
"...Remilia, the scarlet maiden. He took 34th. The King of Beasts staff were the ones who made sure he didn't return as a vampire. Knowing another Undead now, I'd have rather kept him around."
"It was the Brawl, Cauren. Sometimes people don't come back. I'm just sorry it was your little brother."A parrot blinked at the too-quiet scientist before scratching at its plumage and fluttering to rest behind Ko out of eyeline. "Brawl! Brawl! Mkikha."
Sine frowned. "...was that his express wish?"
Cauren shook her head, motivated again slightly out of the funk by firm denial of this possibility. "He wanted to train with Ko and keep her safe from the one Coming. He wouldn't have asked for this!"
"I think he'd have rather won instead. Bonjour, Sine." Ko said with a nod, ducking her head as the parrot sat itself.
In a hissing whisper that threatened to blossom into a roar at any moment, Sine let slip, "...then why the hell would this happen? Did everyone in the staff suddenly suffer a crippling brain injury that rendered them all total moro..."
Visibly as well as audibly, however, the redhead tried to calm down, not wanting to upset her daughter. In a less volatile tone, she managed, "Okay. Okay.
"So you're saying, Cauren, that he would not want to be permanently dead. Not yet, whether he came back as a vampire or not."
Cauren soothed down the child, who, like most infants, was reacting to the smell and sound of the upset parents in due kind, before answering when she and little one alike were calm enough to by her judgements. "I- it isn't like when he first came in last year. He does have things to live for now, people to confide in and love and cherish. There was a time he'd have been willing to be permanently dead, but that changed!
"He thought the world of some people," her eyes flicked to Ko again as she bit her lip. "He actually thought he had a chance after she helped him so much.
"I wish we'd been there."
Sine took out a long breath as though exhaling and puffing one of her cigarettes, and perhaps at that moment she might well have craved one, but instead she gave a slow roll of the shoulders and a glance back at the two as she turned on her heel and left the room. ".......then let's go fix this."
Cauren blinked, the concept not registering for quite a long moment. The pain and shock didn't let it cut through until the other was quite out of sight, before she looked to Ko. "-do you think we can...???"
Desperation rapidly apparent, she slowly wrapped herself and the settling Sarai up in a blanket and looked hard for her friend's eyes in the soft dim of the room. "-I - Sine , that way-"
She almost stumbled and shambled after her other in a bit of a daze until she found her legs again. The slight clanks of the metal boots did eventually find the surety again they had when she'd first opened the door to Ko.
Sine almost bumps into her as she returns with a few devices
"Okay, first idea that comes to mind, the simplest...." Sine proposed as she threw them down on the ground, "Are these."
Holograms pop up, keypads and screens as well as video runtime screens.
"I'd guess we can, I've certainly seen stranger." Ko offered, smiling reassuringly at Cauren. "You know my sword's at your side if it's possible. Count on it." She said, crossing her arms and staring at the holograms Sine had called up.
Sine typed away at a rate that would make a code monkey blush for shame and Mario Jumpman Mario survive a Touhou Dakka Danmaku level on Insanity without trouble. "If the first idea works, no fighting will be necessary...okay get into all the raw Brawl footage...you know that Jumpropeman has a whole bunch of redundant cameras to film EVERYTHING for specials, DVD's, etc...he even keeps cameras on each fallen contestant...what place did you say you each got, Ko?"
"Thirteenth, which fits just a little too well for my second run." Ko snorted. "I was hoping for a championship, but hack, I'm happy I placed well enough both times." Ko said, grinning at the memory of Undyne killing her with spears.
"Okay...find footage...Cauren look away....just narrow it down...." the woman in comfort clothing with a most discomforting task advised as she looked up the sibling's battles and deaths, knowing her knight would find it hard to take- particularly in present state.
"She was thirteen and he was thirty four, Sine," Cauren murmured. "I- okay."
The white haired girl looked away, polishing at the snoozing infant's little nose like the attentive being she was as Sarai managed somehow to outsleep the very Big Bar Brawl itself after finally getting comfortable enough.
"Got it....fast forward......" Cosine muttered to herself, then looked on a blank slate with some small surprise. "....the camera dies about ten minutes later. What happened?"
Cauren blinked and looked to Ko. "Did it? It did? Wait, if you died you wouldn't know..."
That would be the collapse of the Silver Dollar as a point in fact as to what had occurred. The white haired girl is unaware of this until entirely separate camera feeds reveal this fact, at which point it becomes obvious enough not to mention it, although the lack of redundancies in the rubble is a little odd.
"No idea. Next thing I knew I was battering Caitr to pieces and moving on, before everything collapsed and we ended up fighting in much smaller ground." Ko said, rewatching the Brawl attentively, with a fond little smile.
Sine started pulling up timestamps and alternate camera feeds and all sorts of other data, occasionally pulling bits onto a side screen. It would be nearly 80 minutes later that she triumphantly announced, with the Eureka tones of an Archimedes proving formulae, "36 seconds. 36 seconds between the collapse of the arena breaking that camera and the collapse wholly happening on the space its feed was on.
"We can work with this. We can DEFINITELY work with this..." she muttered almost as a matter of course as she called up Ceneric's medical records.
"If you say so." Ko said, watching Clash rip her sword out of Pteron. It made her happy every time, to see something so brutal. It was a beautiful little move from someone who didn't know what they were doing.
For her own part the knight had by now had time to place the child with her sisters without disturbing them, dress herself better for potential shenanigans, and even watch a bit of the Brawl unrelated to Ceneric with Ko, when Sine started up the records.
"Are you thinking of replacing the body o-or something, Sine?"
"Precisely. Chrono Trigger," Sine thumb-upped. "We go and get a genetic sample. We recreate a brain-dead clone. We replicate his clothes, injury, his death, and then when the camera breaks we put the TARDIS in and swap."
Sine spread her hands in illustrative gestures that gave Cauren something to focus on besides the images floating beside her, mercifully. "They pull out and burn the brainless clone corpse, we put the real deal in medical stasis and bring him back."
"...Guess I'll be the one to tell Jumpropeman, then." Ko said, her eyebrows raised as she slowly nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me."
With an affirmative nod from the most experienced dimensional hopper of the three, the words, "Difficult...but far from impossible."
Cauren considered. "The hardest part will be hiding it from ourselves somehow until we get to this point, I think. And possibly whoever helped decide this was the best option. But as long as we're oblivious until it matters there shouldn't be any time problems that I can think of. Maybe set up some self regulating equipment or androids........?"
" Good points. I'll go run through every single minute of every single day from that moment to now..." This was going to take hours of hard work that Sine's going to attack like a rabid dog.
"Cover your eyes, Ko," Cauren went a little red. "Please."
Eveeeery single minute.
The snort from her girlfriend was at once exasperated and amused, as much as that sounds an oxymoron. "In VEGAS, Cauren."
"Sure." Ko said, raising her hands before lowering them back to her sides with a little laugh. "Good thing, too, or you'd have made Non blush."
"Oh whoops- huh. It could be interesting to see a sword blush," Cauren nudged the long blade's handle with her elbow. "Maybe it might be a good idea to make sure the staff that did it had good reason, follow up on them a bit. I don't want to assume the worst, but if there is something wrong that caused the... the not coming back, probably best to nip it before it affects any other Fites and participants."
Sine cracked her knuckles. "You read my mind. And if they're not above board, I'm going to warp them onto the moon."
Non interrupted in Ko's thoughts for a moment in indignation.
Please tell her you were joking.
Tell her yourself!
I am not ready to communicate with other sentient beings. One day, perhaps.
Ko rolled her eyes. "He says he's shy because you're both so pretty."
Please tell them you are joking. Her sword whispered frantically.
"Anyway, that sounds good as well. I'd have assumed enough Holy energy would burn out Vampirism anyway, and the staff have that in spades and reserve. I wonder if Andy knows anything about it..." Ko mused.
"Andy? Is he new on staff? I remember Jake and Sakuya and Mister Attwater and Mister Bixby, but not an Andy," Cauren noted this last thought and latched onto it. "And I don't know if I ever met Jumpropeman's body teams... actually, have you, Sine?"
Apparently she hadn't in all the times she'd had to retrieve the body of the girl asking from various things, curiously enough; and it reflected in her own blue eyes as she answered Cauren. "....no. .....yeah, we should DEFINITELY talk to jumpropeman. This smells to high heaven.
"The Brawl's not like the days when he had to use two Infinity Stones to bring me back. Screwed up. You should have heard me, it jarred something in my brain and I developed this accent that was so thick I might as well have been speaking gibberish..."
The taller woman snorted. "Between all this record searching and plans to time travel, I might very -well- hear you like that, love.
"But which first, the switch, or finding him and having a chat?"
Sine pointed right for the door. "Since we're gonna muck with time, we might as well go see him first."
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