Being married
to an ass-kicking, thunder-wielding, Amazonian warrior woman who knew as many
ways to kill a man with a popsicle stick as she did
roast a chicken was not always what Motoki had had in mind. Because sometimes
that warrior woman found an occasion during which she felt the need to ride off
into danger, leaving him to twiddle his thumbs and fret over her systems.
Sometimes, everyone went with her.
And sometimes, people recovering from laser gun wounds had to stay behind.
"So," Motoki sighed to the teal-haired woman sitting across the table
from him.
"Yes," Neptune concurred, her voice smooth like blood
spilling from a wound.
Not for the first time, Motoki clenched his jaw and fought the need to cower
before the soldier of Neptune and beg her not to kill him. She could be a mite unsettling. Actually, extremely unsettling.
"Here we are," Motoki voiced to prevent himself
from screaming that she was an assassin and run away in terror.
She nodded slowly. Too slowly.
"Indeed."
Motoki shifted. "And they're not."
"That does seem to be the case."
He shifted again, fighting the urge to scratch his backside. "Coming
back though."
"One does hope."
Motoki exhaled until his lungs were completely depleted of oxygen. Then he
tapped his foot for awhile. Then he gave up and scratched the itch, hoping she
didn't notice.
She did.
"You do think they're coming back, right?"
She looked at him - directly at him for the first time - and he felt about
ready to piss himself. "You are a very nervous individual."
And you're scary.
"I know. Once I was stuck here with Rei - er,
Mars - and... well, body parts had the potential to be
flambéed."
"She tends to overreact."
You don't react at all. You're still waters and stone. You have no soul.
"That she does."
Bored and needing to touch something, Motoki reached out for a mirror lying on
the table. The moment his hand was about to touch the intricate carvings, Neptune halted him with a look.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Trying not to cry.
"Just wanted to look."
"Nothing to look at," she insisted coldly, pinning him down
with such a stare that he thought his bones might start melting at any moment.
Motoki raised both eyebrows. "But, it's a mirror, of course
there's..."
Neptune passed her hand over the glass. There
was no reflection.
Soulless witchy assassin!
"Huh."
"It doesn't show you that anymore," she explained, sounding a bit
wistful. "It used to. Years ago, before the fall.
But when we woke up, I looked into my mirror and I could not see myself."
She pursed her lips. They went white beneath her lipgloss.
"I thought I'd gone mad."
"Oh, it's that mirror," Motoki murmured, comprehending her reaction.
He stared at the looking glass that could only look, not be looked upon.
"Why do you think it stopped?"
Neptune shrugged. "It never told me. I
think maybe it got lonely."
God damn it, she's a nut.
"...okay."
"I mean, there was nobody for it to reflect," she explained, plowing
ahead and making it perfectly clear that she did not care at all for what he
thought of her. "We were all sleeping. Almost dead.
Maybe a part of it died too, robbed it of the knowledge of bending light,
turning it back. Maybe with nothing to do it just... lost something." She
sighed. "Or maybe it just didn't want to waste anymore time on me waiting
for me to check my lipstick."
Motoki nodded. He wanted so badly to run away. "Uh-huh."
She gave him a look of supreme amusement. "You think I'm insane."
She is going to feed me my scrotum if I make any sudden movements.
"I didn't
say that."
She smiled. "Your eyes did."
"I just... it sounds weird."
And she's going to kill me right about... now.
She just chuckled. "You are far weirder, Furuhata
Motoki. Believe me on that."
He straightened, marginally insulted. "How do you figure?"
She struggled to her feet, balancing on silver crutches and wincing all the
way. Then she gave him a look that informed him of just whom the superior
specimen in the room was, damaged or no. "Because you are gripping that
chair as if I am going to hurl a knife into your chest at any given
moment."
"...noticed that did you?"
"It's alarmingly evident." She shook her head,
a teacher chiding the student, only Motoki had no idea what he was meant to
learn. "Let me tell you right now that the idea is really quite
absurd."
Unbelievably, he felt some degree of relief. "Really?"
"Of course." She flashed a wicked smile, light glinting off
her teeth. "If I were to kill you, I'd be far more likely to cut your
throat from behind."
Then she hobbled away, leaving Motoki in the room all by himself. He sat there
for a good long while, his stomach somewhere in the vicinity of the floor, the
taste of thwarted bile in his mouth. And though he knew he was masculine, knew
he was an adult, and knew he could probably outrun her under the influence of a
great deal of adrenaline, Motoki curled into a fetal position, shaking like a
ramshackle in a tornado.
"I want my wife."
