Though it ate up a lot of brainpower, the research team was able to invent a reverse dimension-jump only a day after the weapons demonstration for Pechorin’s new FDJ bullet. They called the process the SMC, or Stored Momentum Catapult, and it shot a target object or person vertically into the air at high speeds. Everyone else just called it a catapult. There was talk about what offensive use this could be put to, but due to the rigid vertical direction of the momentum storage, the only immediate use was to launch crates into the air for Natsuko and Daisy to train with.
One such crate hurtled towards Daisy sitting astride Peng. Her training objective was to acclimate to attacking aerial targets as fast as possible. For this purpose, Joad had equipped Daisy with one of the muskets used by the Cascadian revolutionary Non-Heroes, retrofit with a respawning FDJ bullet not unlike Pechorin’s guns. As dandy an idea as it was, firing a musket mid-air from the back of a stone bird was a heck of a lot more challenging than clicking a pocket watch or compass to shape stone.
The wooden box came into her sights right as Peng banked into a turn so sharp the g-forces pulled her arms down and she shot into open air. Trying to re-aim, the pressure was like an iron fist pushing her down. She knew it could be done. Ironically, Boulanger himself had fired a musket from the back of Peng. Refusing to give up even after the crate began to fall, Daisy tightened the helix trajectory Peng was on and fought against the pressure, lifting the musket up inch by inch against the heavy air until the lip of the tumbling crate overlapped the brass front blade of the musket and she fired.
“Bullseye,” she mouthed into the roaring wind.
The poor, abused crate plunged back to the ground as fast as it came up and exploded in a grenade of wood splinters.
Unlike Pechorin’s training, Sofiane moved Daisy and Natsuko out to the newly-emptied dirt patch where the Hammertal canyon had once been for fear of them killing someone by pure chance. The only person permitted to launch the boxes for their training was Kane, who had already taken several HP bombs to the noggin which would have killed any other Hero in Vermögenburgh. Kane himself laughed it off and ate a plate of space noodles to recover his HP.
“Nice shot, Daisy!” Kane yelled up with splinters poking out of his neck and head.
“Thanks!” Daisy shouted back.
Above, Natsuko soared like a one-woman jet engine, slamming her bottle (modified with the newly-developed aerial FDJ formula) into a chain of launched crates one-by-one and turning the ground below into a walking artillery barrage of exploding boxes. Kane was forced to take cover until the bombardment was finished.
“I think ya got ‘em, Natsu!” Kane said.
Natsuko didn’t reply. Daisy frowned. Ever since Natsuko walked in on her and Pechorin being silly she had clammed up and wouldn’t speak to anyone but Sofiane, and only then to receive marching orders. The most Daisy got out of her when she went to apologize and explain things was a handwave and some unconvincing claim that, “it was fine,” and, “the only thing that mattered was escaping Po-Lin.” Since then, Natsu had done nothing but follow Sofiane’s orders to the letter until Sofiane himself went to ask the others what the hell was wrong with Natsuko.
“It’s great she’s doing what she’s told, but uh… it scares me,” was how Sofiane had phrased it to Daisy. When Daisy went to ask Pechorin what he thought about Natsuko’s sudden change, his response was some vagary about how, “things were forever turning into their opposites.” Shuixing was the second-to-last person Daisy thought to ask, but whenever Daisy went to check on her, she was told Shui was in the middle of a Numberspace journey. This left only one person who might know what was going on.
Daisy swooped out of the sky and let Peng crumble back into the dust of the destroyed canyon before walking over to Kane.
“You’ve got splinters in your face,” Daisy said.
Kane touched his face. “Oh, ow! I thought that was just tingling from the wind.”
Daisy helped him pull the wood out of his skin. As she did so, she sighed. “What do you make of Natsuko?”
“She’s nice. She showed me around Vermögenburgh a couple days ago cuz she said I ran through it too fast and boy, there was a lot I missed, I’ll tell ya!”
“Right, but… does it feel like she’s acting strange to you?”
“You mean like sad?”
“No, I…”
Daisy wasn’t sure what she meant. That was part of why she was going around asking everyone what they thought of Natsuko’s mood. ‘Sad’ didn’t quite cut it. If anything, Natsuko seemed mad. Specifically at her and Pechorin, and it felt like she was avoiding both of them, but she was too tired after all the training to explain this to Kane.
“Sure, sad,” Daisy replied.
Kane tapped his chin and then thought. And thought. And thought some more over the question Daisy posed purely out of exasperation. She was about to tell him to forget it when he popped out with:
“Do you think she’s lonely?”
Daisy blinked. “Huh? Everyone’s here, why would she be lonely?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I think that was why she wanted to show me around the region. Cuz you were in your room crying over Yuna and her other friends were all busy. Um, except for Pechorin. But he was dead at the time. So, I figured she wanted to hang out and there was no one to hang out with. Kinda like when I wanted to play board games but you, Yuna, and Cunegonde all told me you were busy with something.”
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“Oh…” Daisy said with the tone of someone who had missed something embarrassingly obvious. “So you don’t think it has anything to do with her and Pechorin maybe… you know… wanting to…”
“Hang out together? Probably. That’s what it seemed like they wanted to do when he popped outta that weird dungeon Natsuko sent us to,” Kane replied.
When she thought about how Natsuko had acted before and during Girl’s Day, and how she’d clung to Boulanger’s team even when they were clearly not good for her, Kane’s explanation made a lot of sense. Natsuko craved company. The times she was at her best, when it felt to Daisy like Natsuko was most herself, were when she was the centering force for a large group. But if that group was all off doing their own things, the physical proximity didn’t really matter. And if Natsuko felt lonely and abandoned and then suddenly stumbled on Daisy and Pechorin goofing around and having fun together…
“Kane, I don’t care what Cunegonde says about you, you’re pretty dang smart sometimes,” Daisy said, patting him on the head.
Kane furrowed his brows. “What does Cunegonde say about me?”
“Forget it. Let’s get Natsuko to come down,” she said, whipping out a juice box from the pockets of her jacket.
They both looked up at the gleaming red-and-white rocket circling the sky in a holding pattern, waiting for more boxes to seek and destroy. Daisy knew Natsuko could stay like that for hours since Black Fire was a toggleable ability whose cooldown didn’t come up until its user stopped. The most obvious way of getting her to come down would be to go up on Peng and talk, but while the two had been training, Natsuko purposefully avoided being near Daisy to avoid being shot.
There might have been other ways to get Natsu down, but the next thing that came to Daisy’s mind seemed more fun.
“Kane, grab as many boxes as you can,” Daisy said.
Kane sprang into motion and quickly amassed a collection of four dozen or so set half a foot apart. Whether the circling missile above them saw what they were doing or not, Daisy hoped it would be a surprise. She nodded at Kane to start smacking as many boxes as he could with the catapult rod and he complied by playing bongos on every crate in sight. Soon the sky was filled with whistling crates.
Natsuko broke the first few before one crate nailed her dead-on and knocked the wind out of her—and her out of Black Fire. One thing Daisy had failed to consider was that once Natsuko was no longer using Black Fire she would start falling at a rapid pace.
“Oopsie!” Daisy said.
She summoned Peng just in time for him to leap up and scoop the falling Natsuko onto his wing to prevent fall damage.
“Daisy, what the hell was that!?” Natsuko yelled, holding onto Peng’s wing for dear life.
“I needed to get your attention,” Daisy said.
“You got it! What do you want!?”
Daisy left the conversation for when they were back on the ground and their ears were no longer full of roaring wind. Rubbing her bruised ribs, Natsuko looked less than pleased at Daisy’s method of grabbing her attention.
“I swear to the gods, Daisy, if you’re about to ask me if I forgive you again…”
Daisy waved her hand. “No, no, I already know you do. This is me asking if you wanna get everyone together for something. Dinner, maybe?”
Natusko squinted at her. “Daisy, we’re supposed to be training.”
“Pffbt, I’m doing this to get Sofi off my ass. We’re as good as we’re gonna get for this fight. It’s not like we’re gonna be any less outmatched by Xians, y’know.”
Daisy was lying through her teeth. She needed a hell of a lot more practice with the FDJ gun, but that was less important than the friends she made along the way, so it could wait.
“We can do all that when we’ve escaped, Daisy,” Natsuko said. “We don’t have—”
“Bonfire dinner,” Daisy said.
“Fuck that sounds good,” Natusko said. “Shit, let’s get Joad to open up the stocks. We’ve only got a couple more days anyway. Let’s give people a morale boost!”
Daisy beamed. The next step was for them to distract Sofiane long enough for them to convince Joad. She, Natsuko, and Kane worked on that plan as they walked back to Vermögenburgh.
There was a lull in the conversation at some point which Daisy was about to fill with another apology and explanation. Sensing this, Natsuko cut in.
“I’m sorry, Daisy,” Natsuko said.
“I’m s— oh… Uh… you’re welcome? Er, I mean, that’s okay,” Daisy said.
Natsuko threw her arms behind her head. “Yeah, no, I overreacted, I admit it. I also suck at explaining myself cuz it’s too damn embarrassing and”—her cheeks flushed— “That’s why I had to bribe Kane to tell you what was wrong with me. So I could get around my internal block about it.”
Daisy gaped at her. Questions rumbled through her brain like an earthquake. As soon as she opened her mouth to ask one, Natsuko punched her in the shoulder.
“Do not say another gods-damned word about this, okay? Not one more! Don’t even smirk at me like I know you want to!”
Daisy gave a bucktooth smirk back at her which won her the aforewarned punch. Nonetheless, she kept her mouth shut about the utterly silly and goofy way Natsuko had gone about making her feelings known which earned her another punch because Natsu could tell she was thinking about how utterly silly and goofy it was.
A moment later, Daisy ground to a halt.
“Wait a minute, what did you bribe Kane with?” Daisy asked.
Natsuko shrugged. “He said he wanted a juice box.”
Kane froze, still sucking on the juice box Daisy had given him. She looked at him, pouted, and put her hands on her hips.
“You lied to me,” Daisy said.
“Nuh-uh! You never asked if someone told me to say all that stuff,” Kane said, hiding the remainder of the juice box behind him defensively.
“That’s lying by omission!” Daisy said.
“I can’t possibly have done that because I don’t know what that means!” Kane said in full confidence.
Daisy shook her head and tutted before gesturing at a copse of pine trees. “You and I are gonna have a talk over there, alright?”
Kane hung his head and walked over to the trees with Daisy.
As soon as they were out of earshot of Natsuko, Daisy put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Kane, I need to know, did Natsuko tell you to say everything verbatim exactly how you said it?”
He nodded.
“Even that part about wanting to hang out with Pechorin?”
“That’s what she told me to say if you asked about him.”
Daisy’s fists curled until her whole hand turned white with the stored energy of keeping herself from dancing around and laughing. More than once she thought she had recomposed herself and tried to return to Natsuko, but as soon as she did, a wide grin popped back onto her face and she had to stop and pretend to be chastising Kane again. When she was finally able to keep the grin off her face by thinking of Yuna, the two walked back to Natsuko. Filling Daisy’s head were plans. Plans upon plans. And then some more plans on top of those.