Status: Panic

Rhythm: 21%

Heart Rate: 135 BPM

Oxygen Saturation: 90%

Hydration: 36%

Last Sleep Efficiency: 47%

Actual Sleep: 1hr 2mins

Time since Last Sleep: 4hrs 57mins ago

Shouri stomped across the hallway and threw open Taika’s bedroom door.

“Sho?!” She snapped up from bed. Wordlessly, the Maestro flashed Taika her own vitals page. The statistics were slowly ticking in real-time.

It was morning once again and with the rising of the sun, young Taika realized she had been spooked from sleeping yet again.

“Ah...” Her ears wilted. “I’m sorry for worrying you,” she muttered in shame. The nightmares plagued her so thoroughly, it was frustrating. She was finally living life but there had to be some kind of problem. It was so tiring.

A yawn.

Or maybe it was the nightmares.

Either way, she wanted to tell him what was wrong; what plagued the back of her mind. But no matter what she couldn’t bring herself to reveal her inner thoughts to him.

All day she followed him about the manor as he went about his business. She couldn’t recall specifics about what exactly he was doing given she had gotten less than two hours of sleep over the last forty-eight hours.

Taika recalled their day starting with breakfast on the veranda. Then they walked around the property (It was probably a tour, but she wouldn't be able to tell where anything was at). A lovely lunch was enjoyed by the pool. It was a delicious sandwich and soup affair just as the day prior when they went out to town, though Taika only vividly remembered this section of her day due to her elevated heart rate inspired by the artificial body of water nearby.

An attempt was made to get some reading done in Shouri's room, but focus was at a premium and Taika ended up throwing in the towel around the time Shouri returned from dinner with her meal.

Finally, it was time for that dreaded period of the day. The one where she attempted to lie down and sleep. Truth be told she was quite frustrated with this sudden shift – she liked sleeping. She was safe in her dreams; at least she used to be.

Despite the fear in her heart towards going to sleep, she was just plain exhausted. She wanted a full night’s sleep so desperately that she was willing to try again.

And try she did, falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

“You? With a Maestro? HA!”

“Get this, Taika thinks she can get a Maestro!”

“No one will ever love you.”

“No one ever wants you, even as a slave.”

“This is the best you’re ever gonna get.”

It was happening again. Those awful voices. Memories she thought she had suppressed. Memories that cut so deeply.

“In that case, do you think I could be your Maestro?”

Suddenly, Shouri’s voice cut through the nightmare.

“You look great Taika.”

“I want to spoil you.”

“It’s okay Taika, this is your home now”

“I’m not changing my mind about her though. I’m going to be her Maestro.”

She suddenly gasped. “Sho!” she squeaked as she returned to the waking world, tears in her eyes.

“Taika!” Shouri was kneeling next to her bed, holding her hand; his face wrought with worry. “Another nightmare?” he asked. She nodded slowly, a bit bewildered.

“Wh-why are you here?” Taika questioned.

“I decided to stay up and watch your vitals. I know it’s a bit creepy, but I’m worried about you,” Shouri admitted.

“Thank you.” She lowered her head. He was so caring it was overwhelming, but she didn’t hate it. Quite the opposite - she loved every moment of it. Having someone who genuinely cared about her was nice.

“Come on.” He tugged on her hand.

“Che?” She blinked.

“Come sleep with me tonight.”

“E-ehh....?”

Her heart raced, face completely red and unbearably warm. “W-with y-y-y-you?” she stammered out. Everything before now didn’t compare to this – this was BEYOND FORWARD! Was he flirting with her?! No, this wasn’t flirting, was he coming on to her? Did he want to do that!?

“Come on," he urged her again.

“Okay,” she squeaked her mind in absolute shambles.

They crossed the hall into Shouri’s room. It wasn’t the fact that she was going to lie in his bed, she did that during the day whenever they were relaxing in his room. It was the fact that he was going to be in it with her. She stood before the bed staring at it as if it would rear up and attack her.

“It’s okay.” Shouri had already settled into bed himself.

“Wh-why?” she asked.

“Hm?” He tilted his head slightly.

Fidgeting with the bottom button of her pajama shirt, Taika muttered something inaudibly.

“What?” Shouri predictably asked.

“Why do you want me to sleep with you?” She finally found her voice.

The Maestro frowned for a moment. “Ah.” He nodded. “I did some research today on stuff I could do to help you with nightmares. Apparently, weird dreams are normal for Resonators when they first get a Maestro,” he told her.

She nodded, what he claimed did line up with her own experiences – the nightmares only started after they partnered up. “So why-” She trailed off, finding difficulty in asking the question again. After a second of fighting herself, she finally completed her thought: “-do you want to sleep together?”

“Right, so the best way for us to fix it is for us to etude more,” he began. Seeing the confusion on his Resonator’s face only intensifying, he continued. “Since your rhythmic stave is strong willpower and weak knowledge and I’m the opposite, we complement each other. So it’s extremely beneficial for both of us if we exchange rhythm more often.” He continued.

Taika at least knew what a stave was thankfully. All rhythm users, whether Maestros, Resonators, or even Naturals had three parts of their personality influenced by their rhythm. It was traditionally laid out in three pillars called “staves”. She recalled from her reading the three categories:

Willpower – the user’s motivation

Knowledge – the user’s logic and curiosity

Emotion – the user’s social sense and emotional strength

Every person has one strength, one weakness, and one neutral pillar. However, this was more of a sliding scale rather than a hard and fast rule. As Shouri had sussed out (or maybe the tuner told him) Taika’s stave was strong willpower, and weak knowledge, while he was her opposite. Though it was news to her that this etude thing had any effect on her. Then again… just being near him cleared the brain fog surrounding her thoughts, so perhaps there was a method to his madness.

Shouri continued with his explanation: “We could etude traditionally by holding hands and meditating or something.” Taika blushed at the idea of holding hands with Shouri. “Or we could just sleep closely and we’ll naturally etude overnight,” he concluded.

This earned a short nod from the vixen. “That does make sense I guess.” She was still hung up on sharing a bed with her Maestro. Her Maestro who she was sure she had a crush on at this point.

Steeling her heart, she shuffled into bed, with Shouri providing her some of his blanket. “Good night Taika, sleep well.”

“Buona Notte Sho,” she whimpered. There was no fighting it at this point, this was better than lying in bed fearfully waiting for morning to come. Slowly her eyelids began to droop.

“Oh yeah!” Shouri’s voice snapped her back awake. “Please wake me up if you have another nightmare,” he told her.

She hesitated before replying. “I will.”

“Promise me Taika.”

“I promise I will!” she cried out, hiding her face under the blanket.

Shouri was satisfied by that. “Good. We can try etuding more directly if you’re still having trouble.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Once more Taika slowly drifted off to sleep. Her Maestro was so smart. Already she felt more at ease here than she did in her room. Was his bed comfier? It felt comfier.

The voices began as soon as she was asleep again, but this time the nature of the voices was different than her nightmares. The voices were warm and inviting, although she couldn’t hear actual words that she could understand. If only she could hear them better...

Closer and closer she tried to get to the voices. She wanted to hear them. She didn’t want to be left out.

“Taika...”

“Sho...”

She found herself in his arms, his warm smile radiating through her as she buried her face into his chest.

And then she opened her eyes. Something was warm and smelled good. She was enveloped in warmth. Comfortable, secure warmth.

It took her another minute to realize what happened.

She completely locked up, her heart stopping in place.

It was morning now, and Taika was in her Maestro’s arms. Taking inventory, her arms were folded in front of her, grasping his t-shirt, their legs tangled in some sort of strange dance of limbs, and her tail was wrapped around him almost possessively.

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He was still asleep; she could hear that from his heartbeat and breathing. But how could she get herself out of this mess? As soon as she would try to detach herself from him, he would certainly wake up, right?

She slowly raised her head to look at his sleeping face, except her eyes met his. Green and blue stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.

“Taika?!”

“Sho?!”

They both pushed away from each other, faces equally red.

“What the heck were we doing?” Shouri whispered to himself.

“Ahhh vorrei morire!” Taika covered her face with her hands.

“Please go back to your room,” Shouri suddenly demanded of her. He didn’t need to tell her twice, she scampered out of his bed and rushed across the hall to her designated room.

Once her heart calmed down, she had a chance to analyze the situation. “Ah, I must have made him mad.” Taika’s ears wilted.

“Sorry for suddenly kicking you out. I don’t want anyone getting any weird ideas.” She heard his voice in her head, which at first startled her, but then she recalled him mentioning that the tuner could do that at some point. She also recalled he could hear her too by simply speaking aloud.

“It’s okay Sho. I understand,” she replied.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

“I slept great. I feel amazing right now.” She blushed a bit as she said this but wore a warm smile nonetheless.

“Good. I’m really glad. I was concerned.”

“Thank you, that means a lot to me.” The red on her face grew as she realized what she had said.

“W-well, go ahead and take a shower. I have a lot planned for us today.”

----------------------------------------

After breakfast was quickly consumed, the dynamic duo of Shouri and Taika left the safety of the manor to less green pastures. Mainly they headed into town once more. The curious little fox found herself looking around, actually having gotten good sleep the night prior. “Where are we going Sho?” she asked.

“I wanted to get our Hunter clearance done,” he told her.

“I’ve been meaning to ask: what exactly are these hunt things?” She inquired.

“You know Scherzando right?”

“I’ve heard of them. They prey on rhythm?” She spoke uneasily.

“Right, they’re shadowy beasts made up of rhythm. There’s a bunch of fancy poetry about them, but in short, they’re creatures that kill people and eat their rhythm. They get particularly bad at night, which is where hunts come in and the primary function of the Maestro Affairs offices is to house and dispatch Maestros and their Resonators out to deal with them before they become a nuisance to cities and settlements all around the world," he explained as they walked.

“Oh, yeah. I remember reading that only magic can deal with them,” Taika recalled.

“Yep, which is why they pay good coin for each one killed.” The Maestro smirked back.

Turning around the corner and onto the street of their destination. “Our MA Office is pretty big, so they have a full training facility. I figured we could check it out and do some practice while we’re here,” the Maestro told his Resonator.

“Wouldn’t it cause a lot of damage?” she inquired, leery of her Maestro's claim

“Nah, from what Aura was telling me they coat all the surfaces with this stuff called 'Vatonium' which absorbs rhythm super well.”

“As long as it’s safe.”

“Plenty.”

She giggled as he ruffled her hair. Getting stronger was a new goal of hers, so she wouldn’t argue with a little practice session.

They came up on the campus. Taika perked up noticing the familiarity of the entrance. “It looks like the other one,” she observed.

“Yeah, these Maestro’s Affairs Offices are all standard. You think they’d jazz them up to make them fit in more, but I’m not an architect.” Shouri shrugged as they turned the corner to enter the property. There weren’t many people on-site this morning, so there were less annoyances to deal with in general. Most of the people wandering about were workers; a few Resonators employed by the MA Office to keep the grounds and buildings clean. A pristine image of cleanliness had to be maintained, both inside and out.

“Welcome to our Maestro Affairs Office, how may I help you?” the attendant asked of the Maestro as they approached the front desk.

“How would I register to be a hunter?” Shouri began.

“Of course! First, do you have your full Resonator handling license?” The woman asked while pulling a tablet from under the counter and powering it on.

"I do." Shouri nodded in the affirmative.

"Excellent, fill this out and bring it back. Once you do, we’ll review it and you should receive a notification on your tuner within twenty-four hours with your license information.”

Shouri nodded looking down at the form. It was pretty basic all things considered. “Ok, we’ll go take care of this,” he told the attendant.

“If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!”

Sitting down on the chairs, they began to look over the form. It had the usual things one expected from a government form: name, birthdate, home address, etc.

"What's a 'license' Sho? Why do you need one to have a Resonator?" Taika asked.

"Basically they want to make sure people who have Resonators are aware of the laws and such regarding Resonator care and such in modern society," he replied, focusing on the mundane parts of the hunter registration form. "There's a bunch of stuff, but the big ones are things like not starting fights with other Maestros in public, not using Resonators to commit crimes, and other things such as not physically harming or abusing Resonators under your care," he explained. "It's a pretty easy test if you have a lick of common sense," he commented.

The Maestro glanced up for a moment and pointed to a child and their parent. They were followed by a boy with blue wings about the child's age, the child was very excited pointing out different things and the bird boy seemed to be listening with great interest. "Before you turn fifteen you can get what's called a student's permit, which lets you have one Resonator and limits your spell-casting to low level spells," he told her. "Full licenses come with no restrictions on how many Resonators you can have as well as full access to any spell the Resonator is able to cast," he paused while he read over some of the information about hunters being presented to him.

Taika nodded slowly. That made some sense, wouldn't want to give a small child all the powers of a Resonator. Plus, the Resonator might not be able to handle it either if they were the same age as their Maestro. "You already have this license thing?" she asked.

Shouri stopped his completion of the form. His expression darkened. "Yeah, I uh... took the test a couple years ago," he mumbled.

Taika wasn't the most perceptive individual, she would be the first to admit that, but even she could see there was something about that question that bothered him - she decided to change the topic.

“Hey what’s that mean?” Taika pointed to a checkbox under the address.

“Traveling Hunter?” Shouri read aloud.

The two stared at it for a moment, before Shouri checked it. The home address boxes vanished and were replaced by boxes asking for information about relatives. Shouri began to fill out the information.

“Huh?” Taika was confused. “Why?” she asked.

“It might save us some time later, if we just take care of this now,” he muttered, keeping his focus on the form.

“I see,” Taika replied. She didn’t understand what he was implying by that but left it up to him – he knew what he was doing, right?

“Okay, I think that’s everything.” Shouri’s voice snapped Taika out of her thoughts. “Come on.” He got up and the two returned to the front desk to turn in their work.

“Here.” Shouri slid the device back to the worker.

Looking over the tablet, the woman went over the work, scrolling through the form. Hitting a certain point, she looked up and studied the pair in front of her. “Mhm.” She resumed her review. After another moment of scrutinizing, it was complete. “Thank you. Everything appears to be in order, you’ll receive your license within the next twenty-four hours,” the attendant announced with her usual pep.

“Thanks.” The Maestro nodded, thankful for the lack of complications. “Where’s the gym?” he asked.

“If you're looking for the casting range; exit out the front and go around the back of this building you’ll see a big building just south of here, can’t miss it.”

“Cool, thanks again.”

“Of course, thank you for choosing the North Riva Solare MA Office, have a nice day!”