No Need For A Core?

389: A Linked Limb

Fuyuko groaned as she woke up groggily, then stared with bleary vision while she tried to remember why Amry and Gem were in her bed, though she was happy everyone was at least clothed.

Oh, right, the fight and Klastoria ‘cleaning’ them, and Gemeti being a source of new skin-life. Bleh. Not something she really wanted to think too much about. She poked Gemeti’s shoulder. “How long are you two planning on staying there? I’m pretty sure it’s after dinner time already.”

Gemeti stirred then smiled sleepily without opening her eyes. “I dunno, I think this is warm and comfy. I could stay here for hours more.”

Fuyuko stared at her in confusion.

“Told you,” Amrydor muttered. “She likes you too.”

Gemeti sat up and frowned at Amrydor. “Wait, you told her that? When?”

He cracked an eye open to look up at Gemeti. “Hmm, a while ago. I figured it out that first night at the baths; I’m pretty sure that if Yuyu had been interested, I’d have gotten thrown over for her.”

Gemeti blushed, then shook her head. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about that night… but, um, never mind. Bah, I don’t know if it’s more annoying when boys are oblivious or when they are insightful.”

Fuyuko just sighed. “You’re all just confusing.” Then she rolled away from them and off the other side of the bed to stagger to her feet. “Be back,” she said and headed to the washroom. When she came back, she found Amrydor sitting up on the edge of the bed and Gemeti hovering nearby, looking worried. “Is something wrong?”

“Um,” Gemeti said uncertainly. “I don’t know? Amry?”

Amrydor raised his left hand, which showed the possible problem. Much of his arm had grown back, but it had interacted with Klastoria’s crystal slime weirdly. Blood vessels and muscle had started growing inside of the liquid crystal, away from the support of the rest of his body.

The slime also had a thin layer over the skin of his left arm, connecting it to the shortened and also regrowing sleeve of his living armor.

“I think it’s fine,” Amrydor said. “Everything works, and it still itches like it’s healing. I think it might even be helping it grow back faster than the spell would do by itself, since the crystal can act as scaffolding instead of waiting on my bones to grow back.”

Huh. That seemed useful, but also a minor problem. “Um, I was thinking we should go get some food, and we’re normally not supposed to wear even this armor when we eat a meal here, but I think it should be fine for you this time. Maybe you can put some clothes on over it though? Oh, Gemeti, did Klastoria say anything after we passed out?” Fuyuko had crawled into bed right after Amrydor had collapsed, and didn’t even remember Gemeti joining them however much later.

“Not about this,” Gemeti replied. “We talked for a little bit, and she shared what happened between her and Amry. Er, is it really alright to not tell your parents about any of that?”

Fuyuko shrugged. “I think they have an idea, and if they really wanted to know, they’d ask. They…” she trailed off as she thought about how to phrase the concept in her head. “They are trying to be available for as much as I need or want, but are trying to not pry into anything private.” This summarized a lot of conversations, but Fuyuko felt it was a fairly accurate gist of things.

“I’m happy with that,” Amrydor said as he got shakily to his feet. “Yuyu, could you wait for us while I change? If I have trouble getting up the stairs, I don’t think Gemeti can catch me.”

“Not sure how well I’m going to do either, but we can try,” Fuyuko said.

Gemeti made a face. “Don’t both of you fall on the stairs; you’d squish me flat. Alright, let’s get you some clothes, and I want to clean up and grab a dress; these clothes are getting smelly.”

After they left, Fuyuko took the time to stretch and go through some slow mobility exercises before she selected a loose knee length dark blue dress that fell to her knees and some black hose, and left her armor as a choker. It was nice and comfortable, but when she met up with the other two in the hallway, she suddenly wondered if she looked drab in comparison.

Amry had shifted his armor into a harness with a left-arm sleeve, and the sleeve was textured to make it look like it was made of black leather straps that merged into the liquid crystal currently making up most of his hand and lower arm. It sort of looked like he had an artificial arm of crystal strapped on or something, and Fuyuko thought it looked rather neat; maybe even dashing.

Over that he had a spring-green, short-sleeved tunic, and was wearing light brown pants to go with it.

Meanwhile, Gemeti had opted for a form-fitting dress of the same spring-green color that was decorated with a dark gold pattern.

I kind of what to have my arm look like that… Fuyuko shook of that thought and smiled. “Alright, um, Gem, how about you go first? I think I’m doing better than Amry, so I’ll go right behind him.”

Gemeti was happy to move a couple of steps ahead and then pace them. As it turned out, Amrydor did not need any assistance getting up the steps, but Fuyuko felt better than she was in place in case he did need help.

When they reached the top, they found Kazue sitting on a couch reading a book, with Carnelian Flame curled up near her feet. Mama K popped up when she saw them, ignoring Carnelian’s brief his of displeasure at being disturbed. “You’re up! And together! Good, we saved a bunch of food, and this will make it easier. Don’t worry about helping, especially… since… Amrydor? What happened to your hand? I mean, I wasn’t expecting you to have one yet, so I guess it’s good that you have one, but that doesn’t look right.”

“The liquid crystal is bonded to my armor, sort of like when I made weapons of crystal slime during the bout. I wasn’t expecting it to affect the healing like this, but it does seem to be speeding things up.”

“Oh. Um, well, that’s good… anyway, you three sit, I’ll get you all food. Er, other than the arm, is everyone doing alright?” Mama K begin bustling about the kitchen, producing and reheating food in a chaotic flow of action.

“Yeah,” Fuyuko said as she took a seat. “We’re alright. What about you being here? Were you three taking shifts waiting for us?” Amry and Gem took seats on the opposite side of the table.

Kazue blushed at being caught out so easily. “I guess it was sort of obvious, but yes, we wanted to make sure everything was fine and that there was someone here when you got up. Especially if it was just one of you coming up — Mordecai and Moriko agreed that company was good to have after pushing yourself like that, otherwise it can feel lonely, and I know that I hate feeling lonely.”

Fuyuko could imagine she did; other than when Mama K was reading, she was almost never alone, and even then she was usually snuggled against Papa or Mama M while she read.

The smell of food enticed Carnelian off of the couch to stalk around Mama K’s feet, and when the meal was served, she hopped up onto an empty chair next to Gemeti and stared up at the girl while Mama K cleaned up.

“Oh no you don’t,” Gemeti said. “I’ve known too many cats to fall for that, and besides, I’ve seen how much they feed you. You don’t need to be for any of my food.”

Carnelian sniffed disdainfully. “I did not, and do not, beg. I was merely graciously providing you with the honor of having the opportunity to offer me a portion of your meal.”

Fuyuko was amused to watch Gemeti keeping a close eye on her food, and shortly after Mama K had moved back to the couch, Carnelian got a blast of wind to the face when she tried to steal a slice of meat from Gemeti’s plate.

The dragon hatchling had already learned that she wasn’t going to manage to steal any food from Fuyuko or Amrydor, so after that she sulked over to the couch to curl up in Kazue’s lap, who was visibly trying to not laugh at the cat-dragon’s misfortune.

It was nice to not have to worry about making their own food — they were well off of normal meal times, so Fuyuko had been expecting the three of them to be fending for themselves.

After the meal, Mama K had Fuyuko follow her out to the balcony for a private talk. “So… just to make sure, everything’s alright with you? And with them?”

What? Oh. Fuyuko rolled her eyes. “Yes Mama. Everything’s fine. Is this about the spar or us sleeping in the same room?”

“Er, sort of both. I don’t know, just feel a little worried. Some of this feels like it’s a big change to how you act.”

Was it? She thought for a little while before saying, “Um, I think the fighting thing has always been there, but for a long time I had to be really careful around a bunch of smaller, younger kids. I had to be careful, and I was afraid I’d hurt people, so I was always hiding it. But I know myself better now, and I trust Amrydor to be my sparring partner for something like this. I think that’s why he suggested the fight; yeah, he wanted to for his own reasons, but saw that I’d enjoy it that much.” And she’d come to remember something she’d hidden from herself during her fugues, like slicing open the bunkin’s throat during that training fight at the end of her delve alongside Shizuko and Derek.

“Ah,” Mama K said softly. “I guess that makes sense — you’ve always been a really strong fighter when pushed, but I never enjoyed seeing you pushed that much. I’d have made them stop pushing you so hard if you didn’t seem to always be happy afterward.”

Fuyuko nodded. “Yeah. Um, as for the rest, I dunno. Being seen as girl that way, well, I didn’t like it. Still don’t, really, even if I like being all pretty occasionally. It’s confusing. But we also all slept in a pile at Sanctuary, and I always liked that. So I think I sort of over reacted at first to a lot of things. I mean, I still don’t like the idea of, you know, kissing and everything, but I feel comfortable enough with Amrydor to be close to him. And Gemeti too, just like with Shizuko. Just… definitely with clothes.”

She blushed hard when she made herself say that lest part, but it felt important to be clear, and it made her feel better to see Mama K looked uncomfortable talking about it too.

“Er, well, alright then; I just wanted to be sure. Moriko was pretty sure you’d say something like that, but I felt I had to ask, just in case. I’ll leave you three alone now, so go on, have fun.”

When Fuyuko rejoined Gemeti and Amrydor, she answered their curious looks with a shrug. “Don’t worry about it, Mama Chaos was just fussing and being worried.”

Their eyes went wide, and Fuyuko realized what she’d just said out loud. A quick glance behind her showed Mama K walking up the stairs to the master bedroom, apparently oblivious.

Fuyuko coughed and hurriedly said, “Well, it’s kind of late, and I don’t think we’re up for training or anything, so I was thinking that I could practice on my guzheng. Well, it’s not really a guzheng, but that sorta seems like the closest type of zither. I’ve heard people calling it an Azerian guzheng and an Azerian zither, but not a lot of people play it yet, since it only got designed last year, and people still seem to be arguing over what to call it.”

She decided to not mention her role in designing it; she didn’t want to look like she was bragging. “Anyway, it’s in my room. You guys can join me if you want, whether you want to read or talk or whatever.”

They glanced at each other and nodded, then Gemeti said, “Sure, but this guy’s probably going to fall asleep again before too long. I’m wide awake since I didn’t push myself the way you two did.”

Which meant either carrying him back to his bed, which Fuyuko could do but she really didn’t want to deal with, or… “That’s alright, you two can stay again. Oh, Amry, you can borrow my jinbei pants again — I think it’ll go well with having just the artificial arm look.”

Gemeti’s expression brightened. “You like it too! He had the idea of the harness, but it was boring, so I had him make it look like a bunch of straps holding the crystal to his arm. Wait… again? Er, does this have something to do with you breaking a bedpost? I got that tidbit from him when I arrived, but I never did ask more about it.”

Amrydor looked pained for a moment, then he laughed. “Let’s make this easy. Fuyuko, you can tell Gem about anything about me, so you decide what you are comfortable talking about. I know I am going to get teased at some point, but neither of you are going to go assuming wild things either. And I want to hear your zither or whatever you want to call it up close, rather than just from the hallway; you always put it away if I happened to knock while you were practicing before.”

He had heard her in the hallway? She hadn’t realized it was that loud. Or that he wanted to hear her play. “Ya shoulda said somethin’, dummy. C’mon.”

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Early chapters, some excerpts and short stories, and more art!