Team Awesome Versus Aincrad – Prelude
Papa and Mama (Part Two)
************************************
Three days before SAO
“Now, nobody really gave a damn in Akiba; if anything, they were envious of him.”
“Vita, that’s way too creepy! Just what do you think otakus are!?”
Shirou and his entourage of young girls stared at him as if wordlessly commanding him to think about what he just said. I mean, seriously; these are the people who draw and purchase h-doujin of Fate and Erio.
Abashedly, Shirou dropped his head.
“I’m sorry.”
The girls crossed their arms in front of their chests. Shirou looked like a kicked puppy by this point.
“…it won’t happen again.”
“Good!” Vita was all smiles again. “So, as I was saying, it won’t do for us four to go to an ordinary shopping mall like this; they might call the police or something.”
“Do I look like a deviant to you!?”
“Also, it makes Einhard and Shirou look like a couple babysitting Vivio and me, and that kind of pisses me off.”
“So that’s what it all comes around to, isn’t it!?”
It is said that the bitterest day in Vita’s life was when she realized that Vivio already looked older than she did. That’s not to say Vivio looked very womanly at the age of 13. She would be a bit of a late bloomer.
“Muu…it’s all because Einhard looks so grown-up already! Stop stealing my growth!”
“Eeeeeh~!?” The twin-tailed lovely could only blurt out monosyllables in response to Vivio’s unfounded complaint. But Vivio had opened her eyes very widely, as an unhinged idea touched her irrational mind.
“Mama…” She whispered, looking in Vita’s direction. “Don’t they say a young girl blossoms very quickly after she awakens as a woman…?”
Vita played along and mock-gasped right before mock-glaring at Shirou.
“Don’t tell me you…and Einhard…!?”
“Papa, you bastard!” Vivio shouted out while laughing.
“I-I-I…I’m still chaste!” Einhard desperately announced, not fully aware that the smaller girls were just messing around.
“I didn’t!” Shirou roared. “And Einhard didn’t ‘blossom’ very quickly; she’s already fifteen, sheesh!”
A puzzled Einhard thus turned to Shirou, wordlessly asking just what he meant by that.
“Aha!” Vita exclaimed, pointing at Shirou while wearing an admittedly more-authentic expression of outrage.”So you admit you see her as a woman!”
“She is a woman!” Shirou realized what he said and face-palmed. “Wait, why are we even having this discussion!?”
“You started it!”
“I certainly did not!”
Vivio clung to her best friend like a leech to a bloodied arm.
“I’m not giving her to you, Papa! Einhard-tan is mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!”
“Who is!?” The person in question rejected Vivio’s assertive claim.
“Eeeeeh!?” Vivio flinched away in fake shock, resting her hands on her chest like it was aching there. “I thought we had something special!”
“I have many special ways to hit you, yes!”
Vita leaned closer to Shirou’s right flank, resting her head on his shoulder and watching Einhard flip out like a young wife watching her daughter’s antics with affection.
“It’s like looking at a younger you, darling~” she said. “Only, you know, with more tits and twintails.”
Shirou glanced at her with exasperation.
“So, didn’t you have a point you wanted to make?”
“Ah, right.”
Shirou bit the inside of his cheek to keep his retort from leaking out.
************************************************** *
Vivio loudly expressed her approval of Vita’s “solution” to the conundrum that really wasn’t.
“Oooooh! Mama, that’s amazing!”
It was not the first time she saw it, but somehow there was a different feel to it, reflecting the attention Vita had put on the spell construction and casting. It did not look unnaturally symmetrical; neither did it look like some idealistic wish fulfillment projection of the self. It was a very natural transformation.
Clad in tight black jeans and a jeans jacket over a white top, Vita in her adult form presented herself to the approving audience.
“And now things are the way they should be.”
“What does that even mean…?” Shirou muttered to himself.
“Waaah…!” Vivio had stars in her eyes. “Mama, you’re so hot!”
“Ehen~” Vita planted her hands on her waist and raised her chin.
“Why is she preening…?” Shirou was still muttering.
“If you weren’t my mama, I’d totally hit on you!”
“What…?” Shirou and Einhard muttered simultaneously.
“You haven’t even looked at my face,” Vita pointed with a hint of a smirk. “Seriously, where are you looking at?”
“But~” Vivio whined, finally pulling her eyes of Adult Mode Vita’s plentiful chest. “They’re asking to be looked at! Pleading, even!” The small girl began to breathe heavily, as if subjected to terrible stress. “What the hell; this is bad…!”
She buried her face in her hands.
“My Mama’s totally my type!!!”
“Wait,” Vita raised a hand as if to stop her goddaughter before she departed in a truly dangerous direction. “Don’t you already have Einhard?”
“Bweeeh!?” The older teenager’s cheeks flushed a deep red, and she startling babbling nonsensically, unable to looked at anybody else in the Emiya’s living/dining room.
“Wait, why am I even listening to this…?” Shirou mumbled and thus decided this was no longer his business.
“Nah, nah, you’ve got it all wrong, Mama. I mean, yes, Einhard’s my number one, of course…”
“BWEEEEH!?”
“But I never forget to give lots of love to Rio-chan and Corona-chan; ah, and I’ve gotten reaaaaaally close to Miura-chan recently!” Vivio took a pensive posture before speaking again. “Well, there’s Lutecia-san as well, but she’s more of an one-san I look up to. ‘Cause, you know, her technique’s amazing.”
Finally, a pointlessly proud-looking Vivio planted her hands on her hips like her godmother is wont to do.
“So I think I have enough lovin’ in me for at least one more girl! I just haven’t found that…” She quickly counted with her fingers. “…fifth! Fifth special person!”
Somewhere in Japan, Kirigaya Suguha found her shinai swinging training interrupted by a strong sneeze. After clearing her nostrils and confirming she was not feeling particularly unwell, she dismissed it and moved on.
Vita puckered her lips and nodded to herself, as if meditating on what she just heard. She glanced at Einhard, whose eyes looked empty and her posture uneven. When Vivio latched to her right arm looking by all means like an innocent girlfriend, the older, taller girl reacted with a rather disturbing spasm.
“Hey, Shirou!” Vita finally called out to the man of the house. “Were you aware you daughter is an unrepentant pervert who has assembled a lesbian harem at the age of thirteen?”
“AAAAAA—LALALALALA, I hear nothing! I know nothing—wait, so now she is my daughter! Huh, ‘Mama’!?”
“Ha! So you were listening!”
“Shut up!”
Vivio looked up at her best friend and favorite person with eyes full of love and excitement.
“One day,” she whispered. “We’ll live in our own home and we’ll fight just. Like. That.”
Einhard Stratos shuddered. It was due to hopelessness.
******************************************
“So, thus far we’ve got Nanoha-obaa-san, Fate-obaa-san, Hayate-obaa-chan, Zwei-chan, Suzuka-san and Signum-san,” Vivio listed. “Who else?”
On their way to the mall, the conversation topic was “the women in the harem Shirou could have, but doesn’t.”
“Caren,” Vita declared. “She may spout all the bullshit in the world, but she wants the D.”
“Caren-san it is,” Vivio agreed and added the name to the list Chris was compiling for her. “Anybody else before we move to the girls close to my age?”
“Well…” Vita looked like she was seriously pondering it. “Cypha of Huckebein showed a physical interest in Shirou…but then I killed her, so there’s that.”
“Mama, you say it so off-handedly; it’s kinda scary.”
“What? It’s not like I planned for it,” Vita retorted, placing special emphasis on the verb. “I thought perhaps she could regenerate her brain as well. Turned out she couldn’t. End of story.”
“Okay,” Vivio accepted the statement, perhaps because she honestly did not care that much. “Ah, how about Cinque-san? I thought she might have been into Papa…”
“Nah, that girl’s asexual. She just does it to piss me…I mean, she’s not really interested.”
Vivio ignored her godmother’s little faux pas, but her smirk had it clear that she had caught it. Vita grumbled and looked away, stubbornly pretending she was not blushing at all.
“So, now, from the younger girls. There’s Einhard, of course…” Vivio began, before stopping herself to shoot a jealous glance at the couple walking some steps behind, as if to make sure they were making out behind her back.
The Belkan Hegemon sighed and looked up at the man next to her.
“Shirou-san…”
“Hmm?”
“…if I offer to break your eardrums…would you do the same for me as well?”
Shirou returned her girl’s hopeful gaze with a smile so full of tenderness and resignation, it made her heart skip a beat. He was speaking without words: “just learn to accept it, and love her nonetheless,” his face said. His earnest loyalty, love and acceptance made her heart soar, and Einhard Stratos’ admiration of this exemplar of tolerance grew by leaps and bounds.
“I’d say there’re a lot of them,” Vivio decided. “There’s Lutecia-nee-san, but she’s into pretty much anything and anyone…”
“In some ways that girl’s scarier than Hayate,” Vita said.
“But Micaiah-san, Victoria-san and Sieglinde-san all like Papa very much,” Vivio added. “Tasmin-san is Uncle Yuuno’s student, and Hallie-san…I’ve honestly never seen her show interest in anyone.”
“It’s a reciprocated respect and admiration as fellow weapon specialists,” Shirou explained, and for that he only got empty glances full of disappointment from both Vita and Vivio. That moment of silent reproach lasted for a few seconds before godmother and daughter resumed their conversation.
“They totally want him,” Vivio reaffirmed. Shirou sighed and wondered why he even bothered.
“By the way…” Vita pondered. “What happened to Fabia?”
She was amazed to watch Vivio’s heterochromatic eyes rapidly lose their vividness to become dull and opaque. The girl she loved as a daughter looked haunted, as if she had suddenly become the victim of a terrible curse.
“…Fabia-chan’s scary.”
“Really. How come, what happened—”
“Fabia-chan…” Vivio repeated, looking up at the woman she loved like a mother with those haunted, dead eyes and a flat, almost emaciated expression. “…is scary.”
Vita was honestly amused as all hell by the whole thing.
“Um, okaaaaay,” the grinning, adult-looking woman thus said, allowing the tangent in the conversation to end with that.
But not before one last jab.
“So, Die Haremmeisterin Vivio-sama can’t handle a single yandere?”
“Shut up,” Vivio mumbled darkly. Vita grinned even more.
“Well aren’t you a rude one, little one? Let me tell you, in my time, children did not talk to their mamas like tha—”
“Aaaaaaah, mou!”
Vivio hurried ahead to make some distance between herself and the others. Like that, all talk of harems and stuff came to an abrupt end. The grinning Vita looked behind her.
“Mah, she’s at that age,” she said before winking.
Einhard looked from Shirou’s grateful smile and Vita’s broad grin and realized those gestures concealed a conversation she could never make heads or tails of.
****************************************
“We…are still getting lots of looks,” Shirou pointed out. Einhard unconsciously shifted her feet closer to Shirou; she did not like drawing attention, but being inconspicuous became harder and harder with the years.
“Yes…” Vita said. “But now we’re an adult couple with two curiously young friends along for the ride, instead of Emiya Shirou and his troop of underage girls.”
“Haa…”
“And now all the hussies out there know the guy’s fucking taken, thank you very much,” Vita muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
“You said something, Vita?”
“Nnnnnnnope!” The redhead was all smiles as she took her place by Shirou’s right side. She thought of latching her arm to his, but that would be taking it too far.
“Muuu, it’s because Mama and Einhard are too good-looking. Too beautiful!” Vivio complained; the last sentence in English for some reason.
Then it became Shirou’s turn to look amused.
“What do you mean ‘Mama and Einhard’? Vivio’s the prettiest girl in the world, you know.”
“Muuu…” Vivio pouted and crossed her arms, although a blush could be clearly seen on her cheeks. “You just say that ‘cause you’re my dad.”
“Right,” Shirou admitted with a nod. “Because every father honestly believes his daughter’s more beautiful than anybody else.”
“Even if she’s an unrepentant lesbian pervert,” Vita unnecessarily added from behind Shirou’s back.
“Urk.” Shirou was trying not to think about that part. The strange twitch of her father’s cheek muscles brought a smile to Vivio’s face, and the small girl leapt to his chest, wrapping him in the tightest hug.
“Well, this unrepentant pervert still loves Papa the most.”
“And I you, Vivio,” Shirou insisted. “But we’re still having a long talk one of these days.”
“Urk.” Shirou grinned when she felt her daughter’s body stiffening in his arms.
Meanwhile, Vita turned her glance to Einhard Stratos.
“There you go. Another Emiya family bonding moment.”
“Uhh…” Einhard honestly did not know what to say about that.
“So…!” Shirou spoke after the moment was over. “Where are we going first? I mean, we have to buy all sorts of groceries and stuff, but that can wait until the end. Where should we start?”
Vita and Vivio grinned identical grins.
***************************
“So…what’re we doing here?” Shirou, who was following rather absent-mindedly—a man without a plan, indeed—, asked his female companions.
“What do you see all around you?”
A brief scan of the area provided the answer.
“Clothes.”
Vita smirked. “That’s right.”
“…crap.”
A man without a plan, indeed.
***************************
“Shirou!” Vita shouted as boisterously as ever, flashily and unabashedly pulling aside the curtain of the changing room to show off the jeans she was trying out. “Whaddaya think? Do these make my butt look big?”
Shirou made a look Vita had absolutely never, ever, seen on his face. It took everything she had not to laugh on the spot. The man in his mid-twenties crossed his arms before his chest and closed his eyes to enter deep introspection. Vita glanced at his fingers tapping his right flank and his left foot drumming on the floor, and as the seconds passed her amusement changed to irritation. Was it really so hard to give her a proper answer?
Finally, Shirou’s eyes opened, flashing with the spark of inspiration.
“Alright Vita, let’s do this,” he said. “From now on, whenever you ask me if your butt looks big in jeans, the answer will always be yes. And that will always, always, be a good thing. We clear?”
Vita’s right eye twitched, but her lips formed a contrasting smirk.
“I’ll give this one to you, gods damn you.”
“Great! So, Vita, can I now ask you a question?” Shirou responded while Vita looked for more things to try out.
“Hmm?” The woman with the vivid red hair uttered while keeping her eyes on the miniskirt stretched between her hands.
“…why are you checking out clothes for your Adult Form?”
“Well, I certainly can’t try out clothes for my true form, can I?”
For starters, there were no children’s clothes in that store. Vivio was already having trouble finding things her size.
“Well, no, but…” Shirou scratched his cheek in unease. For some indecipherable reason he felt like he was walking on dangerous ground. “…you don’t take this form that often. Do you…do you really need more clothes…?”
“And whose fault do you think that is…?” Vita spoke with a bitter voice only she could hear. Instead of letting Shirou know these thoughts, she lashed.
“Aaaaah! My money, my rules, Shirou! Nobody gets to tell me how I spend my money. Who do you think you are, anyway? My husband?”
What did she expect from those words? What did she expect from Shirou after he heard such words?
He chuckled.
“Vita, if I were your husband I’d buy that for you,” he said while walking past her to check on his daughter, leaving Vita alone with the dark, rotten thing simmering in her chest. Clenching the skirt until it became hopelessly wrinkled; Vita leaned forward until her forehead rested on the cold metal panel so many clothes were hooked to.
“What in all Heavens’ sakes am I doing…?”
She was still expecting things. She was still hoping for something. Every time their eyes met, her heart tried to convince her there was something in there; that maybe his thoughts mirrored hers.
She tilted her head to catch a glimpse of Vivio, almost shoving a criminally short skirt on Einhard’s face, much to the older girl’s embarrassment. Shirou forcefully grabbed the risqué piece of clothing and put it back where it came from.
“It’s all your fault,” she muttered, weakly glaring at her goddaughter.
She had made her oath, and she was ready to live true to it. She would have accepted it, really. She would have stepped back, allowing those three to compete for his affections. She would have been his bro, and his knight, watching his back until the end of her days. But then Vivio appeared in their lives and latched herself to them. She needed them, both of them. So many people were against Shirou formally adopting the girl; they all claimed the girl needed a proper a family, or at least a mother figure, not a single father. But the girl already had decided on a mother figure; the most unreasonable, improbable, absurd and mindboggling of mother figures: Vita of the Wolkenritter.
So they became ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama’. That girl, Emiya Vivio, forcefully pulled them together, and thus, to Vita, there was no escaping her feelings.
When did I become…this hopeless thing…?
**********************************
Vita had grabbed a bunch of things and hidden herself inside a changing room. Shirou stood near the entrance, trying his best not to look bored out of his mind.
Einhard approached her best friend, who stood in the middle of a corridor while holding a small-sized and a medium-sized shirt.
“…you’ve been looking at those two for a while,” she said. “What is it?”
“Nah…” Vivio dismissed her friend’s question. “Just thinking ‘bout S and M.”
Einhard blinked.
She blinked again. Then she took a cautious step back.
“Umm…I’ll leave you to that, then…?”
She walked away very, very fast, until she was by Shirou’s side. The man admittedly made her feel safe and comfortable.
“I will not ask what she said,” he suddenly spoke, not looking at the beautiful teenage. “But I will go for it and apologize for her sake.”
Einhard wanted to leap to his chest and cry. This man was too nice!
“Thank you very much, Shirou-san.” Her voice came out awfully exhausted. When an excited Vivio called her back so they could finish picking clothes for her—“Proper clothes, Vivio!”—she walked back into the fray with the exhausted gait of a veteran soldier who has outlived his entire platoon.
“Please do your best, Einhard-san,” Shirou muttered quietly. It was troublesome, but his daughter honestly loved her, so he wished for them to cherish each other forever.
**********************************
“Oh, I don’t know if I can afford this!” Vivio wistfully said while look at a rather fancy-looking purse she did not need. Einhard rolled her eyes.
“You would have to sell your body on the street to pay for it, Vivio.”
Then she paused, thought for a moment, and quickly decided to voice her thoughts.
“You are not selling your body on the street, Vivio.”
She honestly doubted Vivio would even think of something like that, but with that person, Einhard truly believed, it did not hurt to be cautious. As for Vivio herself, she was looking at her best friend with glimmering eyes full of joy.
“Aww, you’re so cute when you get all protective!”
“Protectiveness had nothing to do with this!”
Shirou had thoroughly educated Vivio on not taking advantage of the worship of the Belkan Church for the sake of frivolities. If she wanted money beyond the allowance she received from her father, she had to work for it. TSAB was not an option; neither Shirou nor Vita would allow her to join before she finished at least middle school.
“Alright, so I’m not taking this. But I can still afford this!” Vivio said, showing the tank-top and skirt combo she had picked earlier. “I’ve said lots of money from helping around!”
With that, the two young ladies approached the cashier, a smiling woman in her early twenties who addressed the oldest of the two, Einhard.
“Hello!” She said. “Are you two paying together?”
A…strange switch flipped in Einhard’s mind.
“No!” She exploded, with eyes wide and broad arm gestures. “We’re definitely not together! I’m not gay!” She shook her head almost desperately. “We’re best friends, and she’s truly important to me, but that’s it! We aren’t…gay together! She’s not my girlfriend and we’re not a couple!”
Realizing what she was saying, Einhard suddenly gasped and shook her head some more. Her eyes began to swirl and her fluent speech became stammering.
“N-n-n-n—not that I’m, not that I’m against that! You know, I’m not prejudiced! But we aren’t together!”
The silence that followed could not get any more awkward.
“Um…miss, I asked if you are paying together.”
“Oh…” Einhard’s blush did not change even if the emotions fueling them were different. “No. No, we’re paying…separately. Like us. Separate. As in, not a couple.”
“Way to break a woman’s heart, Einhard,” Vivio mumbled in mock sadness, winking to the cashier lady to let her know she was messing with her friend.
“Not a couple! Shesh!” A defeated, exhausted and thoroughly embarrassed Einhard Stratos threw her arms to the air and walked away to the strange comfort Emiya Shirou’s presence brought her.
“Mi-miss, you haven’t paid yet!”
*************************
While Vivio did her best to calm down her sulking best friend, Shirou—who was of course carrying all the purchases—was sharing his experience playing one of Vita’s favorite games, Genocider 2: Symphony of the Slaughterlord.
“You got…bored?” Vita spoke softly but sharply, taking air as if she had just heard a blasphemy.
“Yeah,” Shirou said with no little bluntness. “I killed, like, three thousand guys. Then I got bored and stop playing.”
Vita (currently in the form of an adult of approximately 25 years) placed a hand on her chest in grimaced from mock-pain.
“You got bored from mass virtual genocide! What is wrong with you!?”
“It took me two whole hours! When I thought of all the things I could have done instead I just got depressed! I mean, two hours! Wouldn’t anyone get bored by that!?”
Vita’s outrage quickly changed to outright pity.
“Shirou, my friend, if it took you so long to murderize a measly 3000 people, then for all that’s good and bloody you sure ain’ doin’ it right.”
With that said, she turned to their younger companions.
“So, we’re hitting the arcades right now.”
“Eh?” Einhard murmured, while Vivio fist-pumped with a heartily “Alright!”
“Vivio, I gotta teach your father how to enjoy ‘Genocider’. You take Hegemon to some dark corner and have your way with her or whatever.”
“I can do that,” Vivio said.
“Oi,” Father and Rape-Victim-To-Be complained in unison.
“However…” Vivio continued while grinning in a slightly unsettling manner. With no warning, she reached for her father and hook her arms around his, almost making him drop the shopping bags.
“I think I want to play lots with Papa today!”
Vivio’s grin fell wholeheartedly on Vita, who narrowed her gaze to an almost hostile expression. In return, Vivio’s joyful grin turned into a catty smirk.
“Shirou, it appears your daughter and I need to have a hearty one-on-one.”
“We’re talking about a conversation, right? Because I can’t in good sake let you two fight in here.”
“Of course I mean talking, idiot,” Vita retorted while rolling her eyes and pulling Vivio off her father. The girl complained halfheartedly but allowed herself to be pulled around the nearest corner and off the other’s line of sight.
“Oof! Vivio complained a lot more honestly when her back was slammed against the wall behind her.
“Alright, little girl, what’s the big deal?”
“Nothin’~” Vivio’s smirk returned full-force as she stared at the looming figure right in front of her. “I mean, I did say I still love Papa the most, and I might be older now but I still want to be pampered every now and then~”
“Vivio,” Vita growled. “My face? Up here.”
“I can’t help it!” The small girl whispered. “Your body’s so…wow, right now, Mama!”
“Not flattered at all,” Vita sharply ended that tangent. “Now, speak. What do you want?”
Wincing to herself and aware that she could not keep the charade any longer, Vivio announced her price.
“…your spell, the one that counters Starlight—don’t give me that look, I know you have one! Uncle Chrono told me about it!”
“That worthless bastard!” Vita hissed angrily. “How did you even…?”
“Mah, mah…” Vivio waved her hand dismissingly. “He’d tell you anything when he’s drunk. You just have to sit on his lap for a while.”
“What a hopeless and disturbing person!”
“So, Mama…?”
“Grrr, fine, you got it!” Vita reluctantly agreed to shared one of her secret techniques.
“Awesomeness!” Vivio quickly celebrated and inched closer to nudge her godmother’s flank with an elbow. “So, Mama, you’re going on the offensive today, huh…you little~”
“Knock it, you’re pissing me off,” Vita grumbled. “Really, to think the day I’m blackmailed by the likes of you has finally come…”
“Ahaha~” Vivio laughed, albeit a little nervously. An unnecessary emotion, for Vita ruffled the smaller girl’s blonde hair and smirked gleefully.
“Damn iiiiiit, you didn’t come from me, but you’re really my daughter, aren’tcha?”
Vivio smiled with pure, unbridled joy, and for once the fact her face was literally smashed against Vita’s plentiful chest had nothing to do with it. After all, how could those words be anything but the highest praise?
*******************************
“Look, Einhard, it’s a photo booth!” Vivio pointed at the conspicuous cabin ever present in Japanese arcades. “Let’s get some photo stickers!”
Einhard Stratos, however, is a very intelligent woman. Brilliant, even. Her sharp mind existed at odds with her demure façade.
“Are you…perhaps more interested in the fact that it is a tight space concealed from the eyes of others?”
Vivio gasped. It could have sounded any faker.
“Le gasp!” She exclaimed.
“You…actually went and said ‘le gasp’…”
“How could you possible think so…lowly of me, Einhard!?”
The taller girl’s shoulders dropped in disappointment.
“I can see your eyes glinting, Vivio—kyah!”
Einhard squeaked adorably when Vivio loomed well into her best friend’s personal space.
“Personal bubble, Vivio! Personal bubble!”
“Einhard-taaaaan~!” The blonde squealed and made a cutesy, pouting expression. “You have any complains about these pupils clear like the purest sky without the slightest trace of ill weather?”
Vivio’s eyes literally sparkled, but Einhard knew better.
“They’re so clear I can see your filthy soul within!”
Vivio’s irises still sparkled, but this time from honest admiration.
“Kyaaa! Einhard-tan’s amazing!”
And when she was captured by the smaller girl’s tight embrace, Einhard Stratos vould not stop herself from blushing madly.
“Wha—wha-wha—Vivio!?”
“Truly, Einhard-tan’s number one! It can only be you!”
“Eeeeeeh!?” It was flattering, but mostly extremely embarrassing. “You-you, you’re making a scene, Vivio!” She squeaked.
“But really,” Vivio continued, this time significantly quieter and more subdued, at the same time her embrace became gentler and in some way more intimate. “It can only be you, Einhard-tan.”
“Aaaah, ah…eeehh…” The older girl really did not know what to say. She truly loved Vivio, but she did not believe she could love her the way Vivio wanted to be loved by her.
“After all, you give me the best retorts!”
“That’s what you looking in a partner!?” The twin-tailed beauty exploded. “A tsukkomi character!?”
“Mah, anyway, photos, photos!” Vivio dismissed the last retort, pulling the bigger girl along into the photo booth.
“Wa-wait, Vivio! Don’t, don’t pull me!”
“Einhard-tan’s back…Einhard-tan’s breasts…Einhard-tan’s butt…they all belong to me now…haa…haa…”
“What’s with the creepy panting!? And you pulled me here to grope me, after all!”
Hiding themselves inside the booth did not help what with how loud they were.
“Please get more embarrassed. Please show me your expression full of shame! My body heats up at the sight of such a lovely sight of embarrassment; I want more! Haa, haa, haa…”
“Gods, you’re impossible!”
****************************
The arcade they visited did not have Genocider 2. That did not stop Vita from pushing Shirou in front of a game screen, though.
“Shirou, the zombie is a noble creature.”
The magus offhandedly noticed Vita had been calling him by his name the whole day. He guessed she had decided to use his name as long as they were by themselves or with Vivio and/or Einhard. He did not really mind. If anything, it had felt weird to be called ‘Emiya’ for some time already.
…wait, what did she just say?
“…huh?”
“The zombie is a noble creature,” Vita repeated while unleashing a bazooka on the virtual horde of the aforementioned creatures. “Free of sanity, enjoying every whim that comes to it.”
“I…is that envy I hear in your voice?” Shirou retorted while his in-game avatar dropped the flamethrower upon realizing that zombies plus flamethrower equals zombies on fire. “Are there only useless weapons in this game!? I want a sword.”
“Shirou, just because you could exterminate a zombie horde with two swords in your hands doesn’t mean you can do the same in a videogame.”
“And thus reality proves superior once more,” Shirou thus concluded before throwing a smoke bomb to cover his and Vita’s character’s retreat—do smoke bombs even work on zombies?
“Sometimes I wish I were like a zombie,” Vita continued. “They’re so…free.”
“You mean mindless.”
“I know what I said.”
“So, you basically want to loaf around the rest of your life, without any care in the world.”
Vita sighed. It sounded horrible when he said it. Her character passed a shotgun to Shirou’s, and the two hurriedly crossed the hallways of an abandoned hospital to elude the chasing undead.
“Mah, I guess I’d have to marry rich for that.”
“Can’t help you with that,” Shirou responded, and the shapely girl shot an odd look at him. Shirou apparently needed to concentrate on the game he was unskilled at to the point he did not notice Vita looking at him. “What happened to that Admiral? The one who was all over you?”
“Shirou, I’m not marrying a lolicon.”
“But isn’t that what marriage is all about?” Shirou replied in the lighter tone Vita knew meant he was messing with her. “Making allowances? Concessions? Sacrifices—wait, is that a zombie with a chainsaw? Why does he even…? I want that chainsaw!”
“Try asking him nicely,” Vita said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “And what the hell do you mean, ‘allowances’? Women don’t want to marry guys who are only interested in our bodies, Shirou. That’s as true for me as it is for Sex Goddess Testarossa.”
“I’m just saying…ha! Stupid zombie, I got your chainsaw,” Shirou hissed victoriously after chopping the chainsaw-holding arm with a machete. “I’m just saying, that there aren’t any perfect men out there, Vita.”
“I’m not looking for the perfect man. I know very well what I want, you gigantic prick.”
“Alright, we’re getting nowhere like this.”
“You mean the game or talking about marriage?”
“…probably both. Can we try another game at least?”
“Not before we kill our characters in the most gruesomely awesome way possible.”
Shirou sighed.
“…I remember there’s a hardware store and a gas station down that street. We could probably blow up half the city, if the game engine obeys basic thermodynamics.”
Vita grinned.
“And thus you remind me of why we’re still best friends after all these years: you just get me.”
“The fact I’m kind of proud of that is terrifying in its own way.”
Their eyes finally met, and for the n-th time Vita wondered whether the luster in his amber irises meant what she so desperately wanted it to mean.
Some distance away, Vivio and her best friend watched the exchange with awkward smiles on their own faces.
“You know, I hope Einhard-tan will look at me with loving eyes like those one day.”
“I refuse! My eyes will rot!”
Einhard Stratos was not in the best of moods. Sexual molestation kind of does that.
***************************
Vivio was off buying drinks for the group. If anybody has to ask why they would send the youngest among them to buy drinks, well, the obvious answer would have to be “duuuuuuuh!”
This of course meant that Einhard was alone to bear with the awkwardness that is watching Shirou and Vita…do about pretty much anything.
“So, when are you gonna give Vivio a mother?” Vita inquired in what passed as matter-of-factly to her.
“Why are you talking of mothers like Christmas presents…?” Shirou wanted to face-palm, but he went with shaking his head very slowly. “And she’s already a big girl; I don’t think she really needs one anymore.”
He glanced at Vita with mixed appreciation and exasperation.
“And it’s not like she did not have female figures watching over her all these years.”
“Yes, yes,” Vita nodded firmly. “Nanoha taught her the basics of magic more properly than I could possibly have, Fate taught her everything about being innocently erotic, and Hayate taught her all the perverted stuff.”
“What’s with that education…?”
“I taught her how to be awesome.”
“Right, right, thank you very much.”
Vita knew he did not really mean the words, but she said nothing about his attitude.
“Actually, I kind of already know this, but I need confirmation every once in a while,” she said before sharply turning to look at Shirou. The man’s eyes still stared ahead, perhaps examining the well-dressed mannequins behind the glass case of the boutique in front of them.
“Shirou, you’re not gay, are you?”
With that, the man’s neck jerked painfully to look down at the pretty woman to his right. His mouth opened and closed a few times, as if trying to speak and constantly changing his mind.
“Wha…wha?”
“I mean!” Vita insisted. “You don’t go on dates, you still keep your distance from those three; I don’t think you even check out women you see on the street.”
“Vita, I am a man,” Shirou pointed out what should be obvious. “I do check out women.”
Einhard took a few steps away from the two. Not that this helped matters any, but it was the principle of the thing. Why was this conversation even happening? She could only subtly shoot glances at Vita, as if that would somehow make her stop.
“Really,” Vita teased, her crooked smirk a wordless challenge.
“Really!” Shirou repeated, noticing Vivio approaching with four glasses of lemonade frappe. “I mean, just now I was checking out this amazingly gorgeous girl right over there.”
Vita turned her glare to the place Shirou pointed at with eyes like a hawk’s. A second later, her glare turned to Shirou’s back, as the guy was already walking towards Vivio to help her with the drinks.
“There’re only mannequins over there, idiot!”
“That’s…not really true,” Einhard muttered, drawing Vita’s attention. The lovely in her sweet fifteens was blushing memorably. “There…is someone there.”
“No there isn’t,” Vita insisted, looking somewhat peeved by this point. Einhard could not understand why Vita started that conversation if it was only going to get her angry.
“Yes, there is,” Einhard thus insisted, pointing in the same direction as Shirou moments earlier. “Vita-san...Vita-san’s reflection on the glass.”
The beautiful redhead looked again, more carefully this time. She looked neither at the mannequins, nor at the rows of clothes on sale behind them, but at her own shapely form mirrored on the glass. Einhard was standing too far to the side to show up as well; only Shirou himself and Vita could have been visibly from where he had stood.
“Ah…”
She sought Shirou with her eyes. He was relieving his daughter of half the glasses. Whatever they were talking about, it made Vivio smile radiantly, which itself elicited a small, tender smile from the affectionate father. It filled her heart with warmth, yet it filled her with so much longing as well—she wanted to be there, so much. She wanted to be part of that scene, so badly.
Father and daughter looked in hers and Einhard’s direction, and Vita found herself inexplicably looking away. It might have had something to do with the scalding heat on her cheeks and the ache in her heart, so hopelessly full of love for those two.
****************************
At long last, grocery shopping. Well, kind of.
“Alright, Papa, this is a great chance!” Vivio said while pulling her father to the aisle with sanitary products. “You keep buying the wrong ones, so I’m showing them to you, right now!”
“Well, this is awkward,” Shirou muttered before shooting a glance to the girl to his side. Einhard, however, avoided his gaze because his embarrassment could not get even close to her own. He was getting no help from her. As for Vita, she was stuffing the shopping cart with the things the Emiya household needed. The fact she knew what his kitchen had and did not have as well as he did should have told him something rather meaningful about their relationship: that he indulged her way too much.
“Here!” Vivio shoved a small, sealed plastic bag on her father’s face. “Look carefully, they’re the pink ones with the little white cartoon bird.”
“It’s a stork,” Shirou pointed out. Then he frowned. “Which is ironic in all sorts of ways…”
“Oh, so this is how a stork looks like…” Vivio mused, taking a closer look at the mascot of her favorite brand of sanitary towels. “You know, I’ve always wondered why these things don’t come with instructions of use.”
“That’s obvious because women can’t follow instructions,” Shirou snarked while taking the package from Vivio’s hand and dumping it in the basket he was carrying. He then turned to the other girl present. “Do you need some as well, Einhard?”
“Bweeeeeh!?” The other girl became such a vibrant red, it reminded Shirou of Vita’s Knight Jacket.
“Well,” he said, while shrugging. “You spend so much time at our place, you already keep some of your clothes and toiletries there.”
She already has her own toothbrush at the Emiyas.
“Papa, that’s sexual harassment,” Vivio pointed out. Einhard thought she sounded a bit defensive, and that kind of annoyed her.
“Eh? Really?” Shirou looked honestly alarmed, and it made his daughter want to face-palm. He turned to Einhard, who immediately turned her face to one side.
“P-Please…please don’t look at me right now, Shirou-san…”
“Ugh…I, I’m sorry…”
“Well yeah, you should be!” Vivio suddenly exclaimed, moving to her best friend’s side and holding to her left arm with her own two. “Only I get to sexually harass—ow!”
“I’m saving myself the effort of a retort,” Einhard declared. “I’m just going to hit you a few times.”
Shirou left the couple in the midst of their scuffle, only to find Vita smirking at him in the following aisle.
“Well there you are,” he greeted. He tried pushing the cart to run over her foot, but she dodged. He clicked his tongue.
“You know, taking care of Vivio’s girl needs kind of should be your job.”
“Okay, first, that sounds kind of kinky from a certain perspective, so please don’t use those words together ever again,” Vita said while grabbing detergent from the shelf to her immediate right. “Second, I’m pretty sure that was not in the godmother contract.”
“There was never a godmother contract.”
“Well there you go,” Vita cockily made her point. “Thirdly, it’s not like I need the things myself, so I’m as ignorant as you are of stuff like that. And finally, I think you take care of things so well by yourself! More importantly,” she continued, reaching for two of the next items in her own list of things to purchase. She presented the bottles of shampoo to Shirou. “What do you think? Coconut extract?” She pushed one bottle forward. “Or cherry.”
“Just put them both in the cart,” Shirou deemed the question irrelevant. “You’re my friend, and it’s your fault we’re here today, so support me when I put my foot in my mouth.”
“What do you mean, my fault?”
“Well who do you think cleans out my fridge every week?”
“I pay my part of the food expenses! I’m not some ungrateful freeloader!” Vita replied in an unhappy tone. “And Vivio does a lot of eating herself!”
“Vivio’s my daughter; keeping her healthy is my joy and my responsibility. I cannot say the same about the other woman who spends so much time in our house.”
“Einhard?” Vita looked the perfect picture of innocence. Shirou glared at her with very narrow eyes.
“Einhard, she says…”
Vivio and Einhard watched the two adults with mixed amusement and apprehension. They knew these conversations all too well, and they had the chance of ending with Vita walking away in a terrible mood.
“So!” Vita finally declared, pushing the cart effortlessly over Shirou’s left foot and making him wince in pain and surprise. “I think we’re almost done here. Anything I missed?”
And there, Shirou found the opening for a decisive comeback. It was more the kind of prank a person like Hayate would perform, but he was not a picky person.
“Almost; just one thing…here!” He said, walking over to a specific shelf and taking something Vita could not see clearly until he turned around, a box in each hand.
“What do you think, Vita?” He thrust one box forward to Vita’s astonished and rapidly reddening face. His voice was unnecessarily louder, clearly on purpose. “Trojan Magnum?” He then presented the other box. “Or Super Deluxe Nirodh?”
Upon presenting both options, he adopted a thoughtful expression.
“Or maybe both!” He suggested in a theatrical display of sudden inspiration. “That way we don’t have to shop until…”
To the audience’s astonishment, he made it an effort of pretending to calculate in his mind.
“…next weekend!”
Einhard was blushing an incredibly deep red, but that could not compare to the spectrum of redness darkening Vita’s cheeks. Normally she would tackle the joke with her usual boldness and strike back tenfold, but that day she was flooded by so many emotions and turmoil that the prank caught her completely out of left field. The whole bunch of other shoppers watching them certainly did not help matters.
“…put them in the cart,” she squeaked, perhaps not thinking very clearly.
“Both?” Shirou’s grin was somewhat lacking in sanity.
As embarrassment gave way to mild anger, Vita’s deer-in-headlights expression changed to an adorable, pouty glare.
“…um.”
“Einhard, I have the most awesome dad in the world,” Vivio whispered to her best friend before stepping forward to get close to the shelf with condoms and picking a box herself.
“Papa, do you think Mama likes chocolate?”
Shirou’s eyes shone with delight at the box of chocolate-flavored condoms his adopted daughter presented to him.
“Now that, Vivio, is an excellent question,” he said, dumping the other two boxes in his basket to get a hand free to stroke his daughter’s hair to her delight. He then turned to Vita.
“Do you like chocolate, Mama?”
Vita’s mouth spouted something like “buwaph!”
“I’m…I, I’m…going to the produce section!” Vita blurted out. “I’m sure I missed something there!”
“Bananas,” Shirou immediately said, making it a point of glancing at the cart full of products.
“Cucumbers, too!” Vivio cheerfully added, waving to her beloved Mama’s retreating back. When she was far enough, father and daughter shared a high-five.
“Thanks for the assist, my girl.”
Vivio hugged her father most tightly.
“Anytime, Papa!”
“No way, I’m not doing this ever again. It’s too embarrassing!”
*************************
Shopping in Japan was convenient to a person with a TSAB salary, despite Japan’s high prices compared to most of the rest of the world. However, the Emiya family could only do this when Vita was around to provide the Dimensional Transfer.
The group of four was back in Mid-Childa, enjoying a long walk to the regulated Transfer point in the capital to Shirou’s and Vivio’s residence in the outskirts. Well, three people enjoyed it: Vivio regaled her father and godmother with the details of her latest match with the one she recognized as her rival to beat, Miura Rinaldi.
Einhard Stratos thought about herself, and her relationship to this awkward family of two plus one, not three. The man she admired as an adult to look up to, Emiya Shirou. The woman whose strength and fortitude she acknowledged as second to none’s, Vita. And her irreplaceable best friend, the person she cherished the most, Emiya Vivio. She respected them; they were immensely important to her. They were ‘the family that understood her’. They accepted both Einhard Stratos, the fifteen year old girl with no other family to rely on, and Heidi E. S. Ingvalt, the unwilling yet wholeheartedly accepting heiress of Hegemon.
There were a lot of issues in Shirou’s adoption of Vivio. Single men do not often make adoption requests, and it is even less likely to the request to be evaluated positively, for a number of reasons. If anything, Shirou’s adoption happened because of who Vivio was, and because of her unrelenting attachment to Shirou and Vita. Therefore, Shirou was well aware that adopting Einhard was never a choice; at least not as long as he remained a single father. On the other hand, Einhard was not so sure herself about the idea of being Vivio’s sister.
Thus, even if she met Vivio almost every day, most of their days ended like this: with Einhard leaving the Emiyas at the end of the day.
“Can I go with you?”
“Can I stay with you?”
Those phrases, easy as they would be to say, never left her lips. She already received so much happiness from them; how could she possibly impose any further…?
“Oi, Hegemon! You’re too slow!”
The twin-tailed beauty was pulled out her thoughts by Vita’s loud call.
“Come on!” The beautiful redhead said. “Dinner won’t cook itself!”
“Don’t talk like you’ll be doing the cooking!” Shirou complained. Not that he’d let anybody else claim his rightful duty.
“Come!” Vivio called her friend over with a head gesture, for her arms were busy carrying some of the day’s purchases. “You’re staying over tonight!”
“Bu-but, we have school tomorrow…”
“You have a clean uniform at our place, anyway!” Vivio dismissed the issue she found utterly pointless. “Don’t be silly, Einhard-tan! Our fun Sunday’s not over yet!”
Einhard bit her lip and shuddered on her two feet. It was so annoying, really; why did these idiots make her so happy…!?
“I think you think too much, Hegemon,” Vita declared when the twin-tailed lovely rejoined them on their walk towards the Emiya residence. “You have the memories of some Belkan guy inside you; you’re, like, two people in one body, living together in harmony. Kinda like family, you see?”
Vita winked, but Einhard was still confused as to the point the older woman wanted to make.
“You should be the last person in the world to care about things like propriety or biology!” Vita said while nodding with satisfaction. “If what you want is a family, then we’ll be your family, even if Shirou and Vivio are the only ones with an actual family bond. They’re not even related, anyway.”
“A big family of completely unrelated people!” Vivio said. She apparently found it funny, because she laughed heartily at her own words. “Shirou will be our Papa! And I will be your little sister with an unhealthy interest in sibling skinship!”
“The last part is unnecessary!” Einhard retorted.
“And I will be the evil mother-in-law,” Vita added.
“What the hell’s that about!?” Shirou’s turn to retort. “And why evil!?”
“Vivio, wait, are you sure you want to make Einhard your sister?” Vita pointed out her goddaughter’s feelings for her best friend.
“Incest’s like a board game, Mama,” Vivio replied. “It’s fun for the whole family.”
Vita quickly turned to Shirou.
“Alright, you definitely cannot blame me for that.”
“Vivio, we’re having that talk tonight,” Shirou declared. It could not be clearly discerned whether he was sulking, angry or resigned. “And you’re helping me with this, Vita.”
However, any and all plans for the evening (besides dinner) came to halt because of the unexpected visitor waiting for them at the entrance of Shirou’s and Vivio’s home.
********************************
“…make dinner for three, Emiya. Looks like this will take a while.”
With those words, Vita left Shirou and the others behind and departed with the person who had gone to the Emiya house to find her. After Vita returned to her authentic appearance, the two had flown a short while to a wilderness area outside the metropolitan area of Cranagan; a popular spot for people with a sporty inclination. Joggers and bike riders favored the natural trails, and plenty of them visited the area every morning. On a dark Sunday evening, however, the place was desolated except for the two women.
“So?” Vita began, sounding a little irritated for the interruption to her plans for a great meal and a pleasant evening at the Emiyas. “What can I do for you, Nanoha? You looked awfully serious back there, so I really hope this is worth my time.”
Takamachi Nanoha, twenty-five years old and single, was wearing her Barrier Jacket. It made Vita a little apprehensive, but it was not like she also had her Device out and ready for battle. Like Vita said, her face expressed little emotion. If anything she looked like she did not want to be there either.
“Vita…earlier, we were talking…I mean, Fate, Hayate and I. We were talking…”
Vita’s expression sharpened. She did not like the direction this was taking.
“…about Shirou.”
Nanoha could see them; Vita’s mental and emotional barriers were raised immediately. She really did not want to be the one there, facing Vita like this, but she had lost at rock-paper-scissors.
“What. Do you want,” the smaller woman spoke harshly. “If this is more of your retarded jealously, I swear to all gods out there I’m kicking your ass for wasting my time. Get this through your thick heads: we are not together—”
“Yes,” Nanoha admitted and nodded. “You are not together.”
Vita frowned. “Then what’s this about?”
Nanoha stared fixedly at Vita’s unhappy face, took a deep breath, and said what she wanted to say.
“We…we have decided…that you should be together,” she said. “We’re stepping back.”
For several seconds, there was no sound other that the music of the night breeze brushing against leaves and branches, and the melody of night insects unseen in the dark illuminated by a full moon and the distant lights of the city. Nanoha caught Vita’s lips moving a few times, but no words escaped her throat. Thinking it was better to get it all out, Nanoha continued.
“We…no, at this point, only you can be his partner. Only you can be Vivio-chan’s mother. That role…has always been yours and only yours.”
“…ith me.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Takamachi Nanoha!” Vita roared, and her fist smashed the tree immediately to her left. Nanoha watched with wide eyes and an open mouth how its trunk was split at the point Vita struck, and the tree groaned as it fell away from the small Belkan knight to crash on the ground and deafen all other sounds for a moment. The insects went quiet, and suddenly Hayate’s suggestion of wearing her Barrier Jacket felt like the best thing to ever come out of that person’s mind.
“You can’t…you aren’t allowed…! This is not funny, Nantoka!”
“I am not joking,” the taller woman insisted. “We have decided this is for the best.”
“For the best!?” Vita shouted in an unusually shrilly voice. “Are you done fucking with me!?” Her fist flailed one more time, but this time there was not a tree to uproot. “Who do you bitches think you are!?”
Nanoha winced at the insult, but she knew Vita was just not thinking her words thoroughly.
“Vita, please calm down a little—”
“Six! Six goddamned years!” The small girl, however, howled furiously. She suddenly looked around, as if expecting more people in the vicinity. “Hayate! Where’s Hayate!? I swear, I’ll fucking kill her!”
“Vita, don’t even joke about things like tha—”
“I did it for you!”
Nanoha took a step back. This…she might have just released a caged, wounded beast, she realized.
“I made an oath! As Hayate’s knight! As your friend! As his bro! I made an oath, and I stepped aside! Because nobody wants her happiness…! Your happiness! His happiness…! Nobody wants that in this world more than I do!”
“Vita, we have always understood your feelings, but things as they are now…”
“Six fucking years! Things turned out all weird when Vivio arrived, but my decision never changed! So I held everything in, these feelings, for all these years! I was ready to hold everything in for the rest of my life! I was ready! It was the choice I made, as a knight, and as a woman!”
Vita feel on her knees, and it was only then that Nanoha realized her friend was crying.
“You can’t…why do you…how much more do you have to step on my feelings before you are happy…?”
“Vita…we’ve never…please, don’t think of us like that—” Nanoha, feeling her own eyes moisten, spoke uncomfortably while approaching the girl to wrap her in a comforting hug.
“Don’t touch me!” Vita roared, magical energy flared, and honed combat instincts urged Nanoha to jump away and make some distance. The small knight rose back to her feet.
“If you are just gonna give up…give them back.” Ignoring the ache in her eyes, Vita opened them wide, letting the luster of her fury glimmer under the moonlight. “Give me back these six years! Give me back the happiness I could have had in these six years…!
“Now…” Nanoha straightened her posture as well, letting her compassion step aside for a while longer. “Now you’re just being unfair, Vita. Are you saying you were unhappy these past six years?”
Vita gritted her teeth until it hurt. She hated it, but Nanoha was right. Aside from some scattered events, like the whole Huckebein fiasco, these six years were probably the happiest in her life. Hayate had become a fully blossomed, independent woman, who no longer needed guardian knights. Thus, the Wolkenritter became simply her family: an adoring, loyal family. Vita’s role as Hayate’s knight took a secondary position behind building her own life, as her own person with ambitions and hopes and wishes and dreams. She had an awesome job in which she got paid for yelling obscenities at people. She had awesome friends who also happened to be her awesome workmates. She had an amazing young girl who called her “Mama” and thought her to be the most amazing being in existence—which she was, but the unbridled worship was always nice. And, thanks to that amazing young girl, she had a reason to stay by his side, and there was not a day she spend with him that she felt was not worth the ache his constant presence brought to her heart.
She loved it. She loved her life, the life Hayate had given her. She loved it so much, she felt it was unfair to ask for more.
“Why…?” She murmured, perhaps not loudly enough, but Nanoha caught it nonetheless. “Why now…? Do you…don’t you love him…?”
“So much that it hurts,” Nanoha admitted with a sad smile. “But it’s enough. And Hayate agrees with me.”
“And Testarossa…?”
Nanoha’s pupils acquired a dullness that made Vita shudder. Although perhaps it was just the cold night breeze.
“You know…it makes no difference to Fate-chan. Whether they are a couple or not.”
It made Vita snort. “Poor, broken, woman.”
Nanoha shook her head. There would be no more talk of Fate that night.
“I said it, didn’t I? I cannot be Vivio’s mother. Neither can Hayate.”
“What does Vivio have to do with anything!?” Vita angrily shouted. “If you love him, just go for it! It’s what you’ve done all this time!”
“And see where that has gotten us,” Nanoha said, her voice brimming with resignation. It made Vita sick to the pit of her stomach. “He doesn’t love us. Not in that way.”
“Bullshit,” Vita spat. “You are the person he respects the most! That hasn’t changed in all these years; anybody can see that!”
“And Fate-chan’s the woman he is most attracted to, physically,” Nanoha added. “And probably the person he wants to protect the most after Vivio-chan.”
Vita would put Einhard after Vivio, but there was little point in bringing that up.
“Hayate keeps him on edge. She pulls him out of his comfort zone and makes him say things and feel things he would not say or feel normally. Perhaps of us three she is the one she sees the most as a ‘woman’, rather than as a’friend’.”
Vita bit her lip, cursing herself for feeling possessive and jealous after hearing Nanoha’s words.
“That’s why…” she muttered, devastated by her own feelings. “One of you should be his partner…that’s why, I made my choice…to watch his back, only that…”
The Ace of Aces shook her head. She looked a little bit amused.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, her voice gentle like the embrace of a mother. “His back? Haven’t you realized already?”
Wincing at the pain around and behind her eyes, Vita tried to focus her attention on Nanoha. Her heart beat with trepidation, as if it knew she was about to hear something she might not be ready to know.
“Ever since Vivio-chan walked into your lives, these past six years,” Nanoha said. “Have you not stood right by his side?”
Vita gasped. She felt out of air, and her legs wobbled a bit. Nanoha paid no heed; her friend needed to hear this.
“Not me, not Hayate and definitely not Fate. Nobody but you, Vita. You raised that child together.”
Nanoha’s shoulders dropped; her own mark of resignation. Really, the truth was so painfully obvious to anybody who looked at it long enough.
“You might not be married, or even lovers, but you are already partners, who share their lives together.” She shrugged. “No matter how much we love him, how could we be so cruel, so dense, as to get in the way of that?”
She found the gap where to push in a lame joke, to make herself better if anything.
“I’m not that desperate a woman, you know. Sheesh.”
“Pfft!” Vita guffawed, falling to her knees one more time. Her shoulders were shaking, and the corners of her eyes struggled to hold the tears in. Nanoha cautiously approached the smaller girl. Vita was Vita, and Vita was scary when mad.
“Am I…can I really…?”
“Aah,” Nanoha uttered. “You…have pushed yourself too much. We’re really sorry…for making you go through that.”
“Can I really…am I really allowed…that happiness…?”
Those words struck Nanoha deeply, painfully. Only then did she come to realize the depths of Vita’s intense yet insecure personality. Was this a personal trait, or were all the Wolkenritter hiding similar feelings in their hearts?
Not caring for retribution, Nanoha closed the distance and embraced this brave and pitiful person. Vita shuddered in her arms, but did not reject her bigger friend and former rival’s hold. For some reason, she felt so tired…
Vita sobbed quietly. Nobody but Nanoha would see it, and she knew her reputation as a badass was safe if it was only Nanoha who witnessed this.
“What about…?”
Nanoha somehow understood the incomplete sentence and pouted more adorably than the average twenty-five-year-old can usually muster.
“Ah, no, no, no! No worrying about me now! You’ve done enough of that!” Chuckling to herself, Nanoha allowed herself a bit of boldness and kissed the crown of Vita’s head. “Go get’im.”
Vita trembled. Did Nanoha even have the slightest idea of what those words meant to her? Could she even imagine the lightness Vita felt, as she let go of something so terrible, so heavy, that she had been carrying for years?
“…um,” Vita uttered, sounding like the little girl her body made her appear as.
“And please,” Nanoha continued. “I beg you, from the bottom of my heart: give him happiness.”
“…um.”
“As for Hayate, um…” Nanoha made an uncomfortable expression Vita could not see, but her voice reflected how awkward she felt saying what she was about to say. “…I didn’t plan to say this, but Hayate asked me to ask you about the possibility for threesomes.”
Vita snorted, and the sound mixed with her sobs and became something embarrassing. Nanoha guessed her Jacket was a mess of tears and drool by now.
“Tell her than only on her birthday, and only if she sucks up to me well enough the rest of the year.”
Nanoha laughed at that, until she realized what exactly Vita had just said.
“Eh? The-then, what about my birth—”
“Don’t push your luck, Nantoka; I’m still mad at you.”
“Ahaha, the messenger’s punishment, huh…”
**********************************
When Vita woke up, it was the middle of the night. Although perhaps she was woken up. Her nose poked the air around, sniffing and filling its nostrils with a fascinating aroma.
It was still the middle of the night.
Walking a bit groggily and keeping a hand on the nearest wall, Vita made her way to the dining room, where the lights were on. As suspected, the man of the house was hard at work in the kitchen. This was the source of the scent which so dangerously tempted Vita’s nostrils and empty stomach. She watched his back for a while, wondering what he was up to so late at night.
“You gave quite the scare when Nanoha showed up at the door carrying you,” Shirou suddenly spoke, and reminded Vita that she fell asleep in Nanoha’s arms. “You must be hungry.”
“How did you know it was me? Wait, how did you know I’d wake up hungry in the middle of the night?”
Shirou just shrugged, but the meaning of that simple gesture was obvious.
“I just knew.”
It might be silly, but it made her blush intensely.
“Damn it, Shirou, you do get me,” the grinning woman admitted and walked over to the dining table.
“To this day I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Make yourself comfortable.”
Vita watched calmly while Shirou served a meal for two.
“You’re eating too?”
Shirou shrugged again.
“I couldn’t sleep. So, Nanoha told me you had ‘a bit of a match’.”
“A match, huh…” Vita mused. If anything, it was a year-long, very awkward contest. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”
She caught Shirou staring at her intently, but he did neither relent nor look away. He looked concerned about something; she could not know he had notice the swelling and redness around her eyes when Nanoha brought her back to his house. However, whatever he saw in Vita’s face now, it made his expression relax and his lips form a smile.
“Feeling better now?” He asked, although from his expression he already knew the answer.
He cared. How could he not? Whether he would return her feelings should she voice them or not was another matter. Then again, she was not those three: if she was allowed to make a move, then she would not waste years tip-toeing around the issue…well, Hayate was not like that, but it still took her years to make a proper confession instead of trying to get in his pants.
She would bare her feelings before him, one more time. One last time.
But not immediately.
They had a mission in three days, and things would get awkward in the group regardless of his answer. They would follow Chrono in his examination of the capabilities of the NerveGear, as embodied in the game, “Sword Art Online”. When that was done and over with, she would do it. That was her decision.
“Um!” Vita grinned broadly, and Shirou saw in that grin a purity and a sense of self-satisfaction he almost envied. “Just peachy. Now, this is a new dish, right? Whatever it is, damn it’s goo—ooh…”
Shirou blinked when Vita interrupted her sentence with the loudest burp he had heard in years. The silence that followed marked a stark contrast indeed, allowing Shirou to stare at the rapidly reddening woman with growing amusement. When he slowly raised an eyebrow to match his subtle grin, Vita felt a strange combination of shame and excitement. Then she remembered she was expected to say something.
“Eeeh…yes! Allow me to sing you the song of my people!”
"The Ancient Belkan Burping Song?”
“Wha—it’s not ‘burping’, you nincompoop! It’s art! An ancient art form regrettably lost in modern times!”
“Right, right…”
“Let me tell you, the legendary ‘Epic of the Ancient Kings’ sung by the bards of fallen Belka lasted almost three days! Three days, Shirou! Of constant burping!”
“I’ll give you one thing: you are unmatched at coming up with bullshit on the spot.”
“Wahahaha!”
“So you just admit it’s bullshit! You’re incorrigible!”
“And you’re the one who keeps me around.”
“I know! It’s horrible!”
The two friends laughed boisterously, alone together in the middle of the night.
****************************
“You know, I probably wouldn’t mind if they were having sex,” Emiya Vivio mumbled in the darkness of her bedroom, where she and her best friend had been woken up by the voices from the dining table. “You know, using some of those condoms Papa bought as a joke.”
“I would! I would mind really, really hard!”
“I’d say ‘good for them!’ and just bear with it. Perhaps touch myself a little while feeling sick to the stomach.”
“Why are you telling me this!?” Poor Einhard was just speaking her mind without restraint at this point.
“I mean, it’d be Papa and Mama. Like, totally ew. I know I said all that stuff earlier, but really, that was just to sexually harass you a little.”
“You do realize there’s a thing called ‘keeping my thoughts to myself’, right!?”
“But noooooo, they’re just…talking. And eating, apparently. They wake me up in the middle of the night…because they’re talking.” Groaning, Vivio stuffed her head between the mattress and the pillow. “Good gods, they’re so stupid.”
Einhard tried staying quiet, hoping perhaps that Vivio would catch the hint and go back to sleep already. However, Vivio instead pulled her head out of her little cave to hang it past the edge of her bed, looming over the futon in which Einhard rested.
“Einhard-tan, what about we do each other and let them watch? Perhaps that way they catch the hint and fuck each other silly already—”
A pillow struck Emiya Vivio with all the force an ancient Belkan lord could muster.
It happens to be a lot of force.
***********************
To be continued in “Team Awesome versus Aincrad”
Originally Posted by Heroslayer
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