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Dolphin Rider Koishi - The End

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FinnKaenbyou: Jesus Christ it's 2:20 in the morning why do I never finish these at a reasonable hour Or in a state of full consciousness, for one =_= ----- On one hand, there was still a way for things to get more embarrassing than this. At least they were wearing clothes, though Koishi had no idea where they'd come from. Rin was dressed in a long dark green dress, and Utsuho was clad in a white shirt with a light green skirt. Both of them had long, flowing hair; Rin's was red and tied in a pair of ponytails, while Utsuho's was black and tied with a single green ribbon. In regards to looks, they looked almost like normal people. Except for the ears and the wings, anyway. But she'd have scored them 9 out of 10 on the looking-human-ometer. "Nyaah! Koishi-sama, you're alright! When the fish woman showed up at our front door with you in her arms after school, we were so worried about you!" Rin was the first to recover from her case of paralysis, pulling herself off the floor and wrapping her arms around her master. She then promptly leapt away, flapping her arms madly. "Brr...! You're still soaking, Koishi-sama! You must be really cold wearing those! Should we make you a fire or something?!" "I'm fine, Rin. Really." Rin's flailing stopped, and she pouted. She held a finger up to Koishi in a matter that made it look like she was the master in this relationship. "OK, this is something I've wanted to clear up for a while. Call me Orin, dammit! Rin Kaenbyou is way too long a name for a cat, nya!" "Uh, but that was the name that onee-chan gave you. I didn't think I was allowed to-" "I give you permission, okay?! That's a silly name for a cat, and I don't like it!" Rin - wait, no, it was Orin now - flailed around a little as her rant came to an end. Utsuho came to her feet at last, and in every way she looked a little slower than Orin did. Every motion of hers seemed slow and meticulous, carefully planned out and thought over. "Um. Koishi-sama? Please call me Okuu from now on." This nickname made even less sense than Orin did. Koishi simply stared at her in confusion, eventually convincing Utsuho to offer an explanation. "Well, um...Uzuho...Utsuo...my normal name is hard to say, so Orin said I should just use Okuu instead." Compared to Orin, Okuu's speech was much more childish. She was probably a little less intelligent than her partner - bird-brained, for the lack of any better word. "Yeah, Okuu was one I came up with. It's the same kanji you guys used for Utsuho, right? So there's no problem!" Koishi nodded along. She was surprised that Orin was familiar with kanji as well, and she had a feeling that it was a skill that Okuu didn't share with her. "So, uh. You're telling me you two have known about this whole magic thing the whole time?" "Yes." Okuu answered instantly, without a hint of embarrassment. This earned her a prompt bopping on the head from Orin. "Unyu!" "S-Sorry, Koishi-sama. I know it looks really bad that we kept you in the dark, but it's kind of an unspoken agreement, y'know? I guess dolphin lady filled you in on a lot, so..." Were they like this whenever she wasn't around? Come to think of it, they must have been in this form to let Sango in while she was passed out. They'd probably make a good manzai pair, actually. "It's okay. I understand that you weren't allowed to say anything." It felt awkward doing this when they looked almost human now, but Koishi gave her pets the usual playful treatment, scratching just behind Orin's ears and running a hand down Okuu's hair. "U-Unyuu..." Okuu in particular seemed to enjoy the feeling, letting out a little sound of satisfaction. Orin was mature enough to keep her pleasure to herself, simply responding with a bright smile. "But, Koishi-sama...you sounded angry when you were talking to the dolphin lady earlier. Is something wrong?" The hand scratching Orin came to a halt. She could feel it tremble slightly as Koishi let out a long, heaving sigh. "It...It's a long story..." Koishi did what she could to explain the situation, putting it into simple words so that Okuu could keep up. After a few minutes she was satisfied that she'd got the point across, and expected her pets to understand where she was coming from. No such luck. "Unyu...if it's your stone, doesn't that mean you should be taking care of it?" "Koishi-sama, do you realise what this means?! You get to be a hero like in one of those anime they show in the mornings after you've left for school!" Koishi suddenly understood why she found the television on when she came home, but that was hardly the point right now. Maybe animals just didn't have the same sense of danger as humans did. "Look, it's not that easy. It'd be hard, and brutal, and it'd be a waste of time for me to do it when there are better candidates out there." She slumped back into bed again, her own words draining the life out of her. "There are a thousand other girls my age who'd be a better hero than me. It's stupid for me to risk my life when there's no point, you know?" That was a difficult point to respond to, and it was the first one to put a stopper on that mouth of Orin's. Okuu sat and gazed into space, not looking like she was paying any attention to the conversation at all, and Koishi took their silence as consent. "...Can you guys go tell Sango to leave? She can have the Teardrop, no problem. I don't want it, anyway." Koishi picked up the gem on the desk, flinging it across the room towards her pets. It landed in front of Okuu, who looked down at it curiously. She seemed fascinated by the light bouncing off of it, holding it at all sorts of angles and inspecting it rather than actually following Koishi's order. "Koishi-sama?" Koishi didn't respond. Right now she'd done all the explaining she needed to, and she just wanted to get some sleep. She wanted all of this magical crap to just leave her alone and go away. "You didn't mean any of that, did you?" They couldn't see her from here, but both of them could make out Koishi jerking under the covers at the sound of that. Okuu wasn't verbose, but she was good at getting to the heart of the matter. "You're running away, Koishi-sama. You're scared." It wasn't meant as an insult - Okuu was just speaking matter-of-factly. Her grasp of tact was non-existent, and she relentlessly hit Koishi right where it hurt. "O-Okuu, maybe you should give Koishi-sama some time to herself..." Orin did what she could to silence her friend, but the damage had already been done. The covers were shivering now, and they could hear Koishi sniffling from beneath them. "It's just...I could die out there! What if I'm not good enough? They already nearly killed me, and they could do it again, and, and..." Koishi's sniffles stopped. She still trembled beneath the covers, but all sorts of thoughts were filling her mind. If it was magic involved, there were even more ways for her to die - they could burn her, freeze her, stab her, impale her, crush her, and all sorts of other ideas that were equally distressing. That was it - she couldn't do this. They couldn't ask this of her. "But Koishi-sama. What happens if you pass it on?" It was a simple question with a simple answer, but Koishi hadn't stopped to think about it. If she turned it down, the only thing Sango could do would be pass the Teardrop onto someone else. Then they'd get left to make the same decision she had to make, with the added pressure that the previous candidate chickened out. "Ah...Okuu has a point there. I know it's scary, but someone has to do it, Koishi-sama-" "But why me? Why do I have to be the hero? I'm no fighter, you two. I won one fight on a lucky fluke, and now she wants me to go save the world? I can't do it! She's wasting her time on me!" She knew full well she was being irresponsible now, but she didn't care. She was too weak to be a hero like Sango wanted her to be. There was no question about it - she was a loser, and she always would be. Orin wore a pained expression as she watched her mistress squirm around in bed. Okuu still sat wearing the same confused expression, apparently unable to understand why Koishi didn't follow her logic. "...Koishi-sama. You're going to get mad at me for saying this, but..." Orin took a deep breath. She was deathly afraid of hurting Koishi's feelings here, but if this was the only way she could get to her she'd have to go for it. "You need to move on, Koishi-sama. You can't go on forever thinking that you need someone to protect you. You're a young woman now, and there's no-one around to look after you anymore. ...I'm sorry, nyaa..." Orin immediately felt like she'd said too much, and felt her stomach cave in a little. Koishi took a while to respond, the words barely creeping out of her mouth. "...You don't understand, Orin. It took so long..." Orin bit her lip hard. She was afraid that this would remind her of that incident, and all remembering it was going to do was make Koishi even more afraid. "They told me I was gone for thirty seconds, but I remember it lasting forever..." ----- It was summer, one of the last few days of cram school. My class ended up finishing early because the teacher was sick, though, so I got to sit around for an hour waiting for onee-chan to finish up. There was nowhere for me to sit inside the school, so I got stuck waiting outside the school for her to finish up. I dunno how long it was. I just started walking laps around the school to pass the time, but I got bored eventually. I figured I could get away with heading a little further away from the school - I'd see onee-chan coming out anyway, and it was still pretty light. There was something I wanted to check anyway, so I took a little stroll to a lake nearby. I pulled out the treasure map one of my classmates handed to me earlier, marking the lakebed with a giant X at one point. There was hidden treasure there, apparently, and I wanted to see if I could find it for myself. I only had to pay a good 500 Yen for it as well. Tewi was a good friend, I thought. I took off my bag and shoes before treading carefully into the water. A little cold, but I could handle it. We'd just finished doing swimming lessons in school, so I figured a little lake couldn't be that much of a problem. I swam out into the water, remembering the instructions I'd been given from the teacher, arms straight, legs straight, everything perpedicular to the surface. No problem. That was about far enough, I thought. I took a deep breath, and plunged down into the water below. The X should have been round about here, according to the map, so I swam along the bottom to inspect it in further detail. I couldn't see any of the markings that Tewi pointed out on the map, like the rock shaped like a cross of the dead man's skull. All I could see was seaweed, seaweed and more seaweed. I was beginning to wonder if I'd been tricked by a simple prank when something yanked at my leg. "Agglubl?!" I turned on the spot, feeling my left leg stuck in place. There was seaweed tied all around it in some impossibly complicated set of knots. I tried to jerk my leg out from the seaweed's grip, but it was firmly caught in its grip. That's when the fear started to set in. I reached down and started tugging at the tangled weeds with boths hands, doing what I could to untie myself. But with every move, they seemed to get tighter, and if anything all my efforts managed was to get me even more trapped. "M-Mmbl! Mmmggglbl!" My chest hurt. I hadn't been under long, but I was panicking. Can you blame me? I was a kid who barely knew what death was, and now here I was trapped in a forgotten lake with no-one around to help me. My efforts to free myself grew more desperate. I clawed at the seaweed, trying to somehow cut it with my nails as I kicked in every direction I could think of. Nothing, and all I managed to do was tire myself out with it. My lungs were on fire. Help me! Someone! Anyone! The lake was empty. I was dying, and no-one even knew it. "G-glagglb!" My hands clutched my throat suddenly, as my lungs decided they weren't going to take any more of this. The little air I had forced itself out in a few violent, panicked gurgles. My head was feeling light, and the world was getting dark around me. Maybe this was it...if I just passed out here, then maybe this wasn't such a bad way to die. Then my body decided to breathe in against my will. It hurt in ways I never even thought possible. It felt like someone had set off a bomb inside my chest. I started flailing madly, not even thinking anymore, totally overwhelmed by that pain. Ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts Every breath my body made me take just brought in more water and more pain. I was vaguely aware that this was all my fault - I'd been the idiot who jumped into a lake unsupervised and got herself trapped. All of this was because I was an idiot. Ah...it's getting dark... I started to feel numb as my brain shut down. It was a welcome escape, as I stopped trying to make an escape and just let my body go limp. For a moment, I thought there was something in the distance...someone, coming closer. But it was probably just my mind playing tricks as it suffocated. The instant I closed my eyes, the world around me ceased to exist. --- The next thing I remember was three hours later, waking up in a hospital bed. It was hard to breathe - there was a doctor next to me, spouting out long words like resuscitation and cardiac arrest. I wasn't really paying attention to him. I was busy being hugged by Onee-chan, who'd been waiting at my side ever since I'd been checked in. "Koishi...oh, Koishi!" I only found out later that her class had finished just after I went off on my little expedition. She couldn't find me, saw my things lying next to the lakeside, and put two and two together. By the time she found me, though, I'd already passed out, and she had to lift my limp body to the surface after cutting me out of the seaweed with a set square. "I...I thought I lost you...Koishi, I was so worried..." Onee-chan could barely speak then, she was struggling that hard to fight with the tears. I noticed something a little weird then - I always remembered her having light brown hair, but all of a sudden it was a light shade of pink. I recall asking her about it later, and her not having a clue what I was talking about - but everyone could see that my hair was pure silver now. While my sister was holding me tightly and crying into my chest, I realised that if she hadn't shown up and saved me, I would have drowned for sure in that lake. I'd be dead. I'd be nothing. Without Onee-chan, I would be nothing. Without Onee-chan, I wouldn't exist. Without Onee-chan, I was worthless... ----- Koishi came back into the present, well aware that her face was streaming with tears. "Don't you get it? If I didn't have Onee-chan, I'd be dead. If I go off and do my own thing now I'll probably get myself into another situation like that, and this time she won't be around to save me." The air in the room felt heavier than rock. Orin couldn't bring herself to raise her head up, and even Okuu was well aware that the atmosphere in the room was sullen. "Onee-chan went to a lot of effort to save me. I'm not about to throw that life away trying to be a hero. I...I can't do it." Orin's head was spinning. There were a thousand things she wanted to say at once - she wanted to apologise from bringing those memories back up, she wanted to make a joke to lighten the mood, she wanted to walk out and tell Sango to get lost, she wanted to just break down into tears right in front of Koishi. But one emotion was welling up above all of those. It was the emotion a mother felt when they heard their child say they were going to do something incredibly irresponsible, the feeling someone got when kind words went out the window. Orin disregarded her former fears about upsetting her master. These were harsh words, but they had to be said. "Look, I know I'm not the person who you want saying this, but Satori-sama isn't here so I'm gonna have to do it for her." Okuu watched as her friend got to her feet, anger starting to flare up in her eyes. "You think this is what she wanted you to be like? Lying in bed moaning about how terrible you are? Honestly, sometimes I'm glad that Satori-sama isn't around, because if she saw the state you've managed to get yourself into it'd just about break her heart!" Orin pulled the covers off the bed, revealing the cowering Koishi underneath. She looked up at her own pet with frightened eyes. "Yes, maybe this is gonna be dangerous. Yes, maybe if you screw up you're going to die. But tell me something - just what kind of life are you living right now? You let people walk over you all day and spend all night lying in bed and doing nothing. This is your chance to go out there and do something! This is your opening to go out there and live your freaking life! And if you don't make something of it, I'll...I'll scratch at your bed at night when you're trying to sleep! I'll follow you into school and refuse to leave you alone! I'll stare at you when you go to the bathroom! I'll...nyaaaaah!" Her anger boiled over, and Orin slumped onto the floor. She couldn't find words to express her emotions any more, and she finally settled for resting her head on Koishi's lap. She'd said some horrible things, things she couldn't take back, things she regretted, and she felt lousy for having shot her mouth. "Unyuu..." Okuu groaned nearby. This was all going to quickly for her to follow now, and she just had to sit back and watch things unfold. The cat continued to squirm around, waiting for some sort of response from her master. She finally received another stroke behind her ears, and the stress in her body melted away. "Okuu." "Ah?" Koishi's face seemed calmer now, more accepting. Maybe Orin's rant had managed to get through that thick skull of hers. She still looked nervous, but she took a deep breath and managed to get the words out. "...Call in Sango. I want to agree to this now before I chicken out again." ----- Honestly, the dolphin wasn't very hopeful for Koishi's chances - with denial that strong, it would likely take a miracle to get her to cooperate. She expected to have the Teardrop thrown violently at her the instant she entered the room as she got yelled at to get out of the house. Instead, she walked in to see Koishi sitting upright in bed, looking a lot braver that she did before. It was a look that didn't come to her naturally, but she was clearly doing her best to act strong. It needed some work, but it was a good start. "Sango, can I make one request?" She liked the sound of that. It was the sound of success and cooperation. Sango grinned. "Shoot. Your wish is my command." "I don't want to kill anyone. If we have to fight someone, knock them out, run away, whatever, just don't kill them. I...don't think I can do that." Sango's heart lifted a little. She expected her to join out of payback if nothing else; to see such a peaceful angle coming from her was a pleasant surprise. "Alright, then. I'm not gonna be a slave driver, so you can take tonight to rest. You just came through a long day, so I figure you deserve it." Sango made to leave the room. She'd borrow the couch for now - she didn't really need sleep in the same way humans did, so she'd survive. "One question, though - what made you change your mind?" Koishi looked to Orin with a small smile. "...I guess an old friend told me something I needed to hear." ----- Well, that's Koishi just about out of the worst stages of her emo. Thank god. -_-

Moerin: --- Quote from: Roukanken on August 21, 2010, 01:23:41 AM ---Jesus Christ it's 2:20 in the morning why do I never finish these at a reasonable hour Or in a state of full consciousness, for one =_= --- End quote --- Because you put lots of effort into your work, and it shows.  Really, you're doing great with it so far~  I'm really looking forward to the next part.  Keep at it, okay?  This really is awesome so far~

Thaws: This seemed silly at first, but I really like this alternate Gensokyo-like universe you've set up. I find myself like this more than PLotSS :V, can't wait to see more of this. and how many times are you going to drown Koishi In my defense, she's only actually drowned once. >.>

Alfred F. Jones: I'm definitely familiar with emo Koishi :ohdear: I'm very glad to see her gain some courage, though. This is already such an interesting read.

Dead Princess Sakana: So I just caught up on the new updates, and: --- Quote from: Roukanken on August 18, 2010, 12:43:59 AM ---It proves that I can't even cover a light subject like mahou-shoujo without turning it serious business. --- End quote --- I now totally agree. Poor Koishi ;_; Looking forward to what happens now that she finally pulled herself together, though~

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