Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction ❯ Trial By Tenderness ❯ Part 27 - Quickenings ( Chapter 27 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Part 27 Quickenings



I felt like I was emerging from a long cavern of spirit. Everything had gone blank...but not invisible. Occasionally when I clutch the throes of an intense endeavor, I my senses 'tune out'...as if the inhibitory centers of my brain transform into little elves working overtime. I had started playing on my keys...and then everything went aqua.
As my awareness unspiraled, I regarded the constellation of keyboards and lights and meters in my "Cevn's Studio" music room.
The music had harvested itself out of my heart, and yet I felt a sense of ownership. Like I had made it. Had MADE it!
I had soundframed the kind of composition that arrives after a deep stirring of kokoro, arising to the surface like loam skimmering atop a tempest-driven ocean. The ocean of my soul...poured out into a wellcup of sound. I sat up and sighed, and then jacked the pod in and downloaded. I knew that I would need to obtain a much higher quality digital virtual studio before releasing this stuff on CD...I made a mental note to ask our resident technophile Skuldandy for her assistance. Regarding the important matter of composing new music, I felt satisfied that this new creation was equi-audio with the music I taped for Keiichi's race.
What I had composed was nothing more than foundation for the framework...but soon, I would be able to clothe it with sonic architecture...
My legs had stiffened from kneeling for hours in front of my keyboards. I wanted to stroll through the house to see how everyone was doing. Keiichi was talking with Skuld..er, Bellkuld, while Skuldandy was nowhere to be seen.
"Probably in her mecha lab," I surmised. I still wasn't acclimated to the transcarnation between Belldandy and Skuld. Once more, I envisioned how frustrating this must be for Keiichi.

* * * * * * * *

"Hey, we're home!" Megumi shouted.
"Look what the cat brought in!" Genji announced, as Sayoko stepped in through the door.
Sayoko darted an annoyed face at her brother, and then examined everyone in the room for their reactions, trying to avoid smiling nervously. They were all here! She felt a brief moment of shame, because all these people knew where she had been...and why.
"I can't save my face and my ass at the same time," she remembered, tooling against her seeming loss of face.
As Cevn caught her eye, he immediately discerned that Sayoko had *got it*. There is an almost intangible attribute that people develop when they are 'on fire' for recovery. Intangible to most...but recognizable to one who has returned from the Hell of drug addiction. He grinned broadly, realizing that Sayoko was radiating said aspect.
Bellkuld politely excused herself as an exercise of caution; she didn't want Sayoko to guess what had happened with the body/spirit transference. She felt happy that Sayoko's aura had changed to a pleasant blue.
Keiichi was all smiles when he saw Sayoko..and realized that this was a *new* Sayoko! He could sense her profound gratitude and joy, despite her attempts to conceal how bestunned she was at all the attention. Fighting against his awkward inclinations, he hugged Sayoko and welcomed her back.
Sayoko...who used to be an enemy...
"Hug?" Cevn offered after Keiichi hugged her.
"Sure," she said, then grabbed him in a tight hug. Cevn knew from personal experience that her treatment had been very harsh. Sayoko had been grouped: her ego dissected; her character flaws examined; her self-centeredness confronted; and her irrational beliefs challenged.
On top of that, she had to *feel* for the first time in a long time. Drugs possess a way of surreptitiously suppressing feelings; the doped-out 'feelings' that many addicts experience during active drug use are frequently little more than a disinhibition of candor. But once an addict is clean, the shame and guilt of their past behavior stalks them...haunts them.
Seeing Sayoko, Cevn revisited his own insecurities when he had first received the gift of recovery. He remembered his anger when he realized that he couldn't use drugs the way others do. His anger intensified with the frustrating awareness that the so-called "legal drugs" such as ethanolic substances were also included. There is no 'having one with the gang' for an addict. Continuing to face the life-threatening nature of the disease of addiction creates a huge amount of fear. Further, the alienation that accompanies active drug addiction fuels a desperate loneliness.
Sayoko knew that she had been relying on the drugs to cast her in a social light. But now, the drugs weren't 'talking through' her. She was talking for herself instead...and she had been prepared by the counselors to expect discomfort and fear as she tried rejoin society with a deficit in social confidence.
"It takes one addict to know another addict," Cevn thought as he watched Sayoko's conflicted expression. And he felt proud that Sayoko had faced up to the truth.
"The truth is painful and harsh, but it is the *only* truth...and it will set you free. From this point of freedom, the journey begins," he said to himself in a low voice. Her journey into recovery...would take her up and out of the misery of active drug use.
Sayoko just wanted to hug Genji...and never let go. This moment, this homecoming, was so *perfect* in her mind. Except for the presence of one person. She felt herself loosening roadrunner tears onto her brother's shoulder.
"She's definitely emotionally raw from the treatment," Cevn reminded himself. "Those are tears of gratitude...tears she's been needing to cry for God knows how long!"
Megumi felt her own eyes tearing up in empathy; she was happy for Sayoko...and filled with a sweet relief to see how her Genji was overjoyed to have his big sister back! Even if she was treating Megumi with a bitchy indifference...
"Genji, I..I don't know how to thank you," Sayoko managed to say between sobs. "All of you guys...you saved my life! If it weren't for you...well, I really don't want to think where I'd be at now!"
Genji noticed a hardened edginess to her demeanor, despite the tearful reunion. Sayoko was definitely being brusque, perhaps even rude, towards Megumi.
"Could she be *jealous* that I have a girlfriend?" Genji wondered. He'd read numbers of novels, replete with storylines about older sisters who were close to their younger brothers...about how they sometimes perceive a girlfriend as 'competition'. He tried to unjitter his nerves, recognizing that he was noticeably more agitated than usual around Sayoko and Megumi. He could sense that Megumi was subdued...almost deliberate in her efforts to be superficial. He could relate with her caution; a part of him almost wanted to be invisible...keeping his interactions with everyone refrained and tentative.
"It's good to have you back, Sayoko!" Keiichi said good-heartedly. "I really thought for a while that you would never come back from the drug world."
*That* statement pretty much summed an explanation for everyone's joyous relief towards Sayoko's return from DART. She as the realization struck her that Keiichi admitted to seeing her cause as so impossible...that he had struggled not to reluctantly write her off as hopelessly addicted. She looked at Cevn with an indefinable expression, then asked him for another hug.
"How did you *know*?" she asked. "How did you know what was wrong with me?"
"It takes one to know one, Sayoko," Cevn told her gently.

* * * * * * * *

The hours after Sayoko's return were almost festive in mood. The spirits of our house brightened considerably against the gloom of Bellkuld and Skuldandy's situation. So it was after midnight when I found time to go over tomorrow's Greek lesson on the dining room table. My summer didn't allow me an opportunity to adequately review any of the Japanese textbooks on Greek instruction; instead, I would have to prepare the lessons on my own until I could.
I planned to start the class off with the Greek alphabet drills, of course; then I would introduce them to Greek terms cognate with Romanji transliteration. Logos===Logic===Rogika, and stuff like that. There were only six students in the class, according to this morning's enrollment report. But six was a start.
I heard someone walk up behind me, then felt a tap on my shoulder.
"Cevn, I'm going be spending the night here on the couch, courtesy of Keiichi. But I'm so restless. Can we talk?" Sayoko offered.
"Sure...in fact I was hoping you would make time to rap with me," I replied. Sayoko and I went out into the gallery and sat down on the wooden walkway on the sunroom end of the house, clear away from any open bedroom windows.
"I'm glad to be back...but I'm also scared," she admitted. I was impressed with her quick avail to humility. Too often, newcomers who had just finished treatment were cocky with their newfound recovery. I certainly was that way at first.
"I have a lot of decisions to make," she continued. "First off...I don't know if I'm going to live with my parents or not. And I've missed the start of the fall term and..."
"Hey, one difficult decision at a time! Do you *want* to return to N.I.T. for the fall? Because if you do...I took the initiative to enroll you conditionally. I covered for you; you can register late without penalty, and make up missed assignments. Since it's the third week of school, there'll be a lot of makeup work...but I think you can manage okay," I assured her. Sayoko looked at me with a thankful expression, which changed into a worried one.
"Did you *tell them*?" she asked.
"Don't worry, all they know is that you were on sick leave due to illness this summer. They don't know anything else!"
Sayoko's face lit up with this good news and nodded her head...which I took as an 'affirmative' that she would be going back to school. I suggested that we talk about school stuff later...I didn't want her getting sidetracked away from talking about what she was feeling. She looked like she was ready to burst with pent-up frustration.

* * * * * * * *

"I'm so angry...because Genji *didn't even tell me* that he was going out with Megumi! I'm his big sister...and here he is *living* with her! What if they've been *sleeping together*? And how do I know that Keiichi's little sister is good enough for him? For *us*? Why would he keep this from me? WHY?" Sayoko said resentfully, staring off into the direction of the vehicle garage. For all her hard work in treatment, she had arrived back home...and was rewarded with a betrayal by her younger brother. She was afraid that her emotions were going to spill over the dam.
"Genji's all the family I have! Snff..I'm sure you've noticed that my stupid yuppie parents didn't even come to visit me...they're more concerned about being corporate kaichos than parents! They didn't even *write me*! It feels like I haven't had parents for..snff..most of my life. I've been alone for so long...just drinking to deal with the loneliness...and now my little brother falls in love and I MISSED IT! I want him to be happy, and I just wasn't there for him...because of my stupid addiction!" she accused herself. She felt livid towards her younger brother; something she had struggled to conceal for the whole evening. Beyond this, a fracturing anger towards herself glowed in Sayoko's heart...because she missed out on such an important moment in his life.
She watched Cevn struggle with himself for a moment, then put a comforting arm around her. Sayoko felt her shoulders heave with sadness as he asked her to slow down and catch her breath.
"Do you know what it's like to grow up wealthy, Cevn? Genji and I were *spoiled rotten*! We had toys and vacations and weekend trips to the amusement parks and resorts. We were always dressed in the finest clothes, and we had the best private high school tutors. My parents send me 175,000 yen a month for an allowance, just to buy the latest fashions. But they were never there for me! NEVER!" Sayoko said vehemently.
She struggled as she recalled how she had met with a lot of animosity from the others in treatment. They envied her wealth...many of them harbored jealous feelings as well. But she wanted so desperately to convince *someone* about her plight...the vivid reality that money does not equal affection. It was hard to do this in treatment. But maybe now, someone could understand, if only a little bit.
"NEVER!" she heard herself screaming again.
"Hey...cool it out there!" a distant female voice warned. Sayoko realized that it was after midnight...she needed to tone it down!
"Piano and ballet lessons, excursions to art museums, formal dinners, Kabuki theater, Sumo bashos, summers in Switzerland, France and Hawaii...but always by ourselves! Just Genji and I. Chauffeurs and nannies and tutors and governesses. If only my mother would have been there to listen to me, just once! T..to talk with me about things that mothers usually talk to their daughters about, like having crushes on guys and writing love letters and dealing with competition from other girls. If she would have just spent some time with me, just to go out with me when I shopped for clothes, shit...to just sit across from me at a restaurant and split a fudge sundae! That's *all* I ever wanted, ever since I was a little girl..." Sayoko rattled off between tears. She held onto Cevn for dear life, realizing that her sensei was a brother in recovery.
She knew she had a long road ahead of her. There wasn't any NA meetings in Makuhari. Until tonight.
"Two addicts meeting for the purpose of mutual support...this was a meeting," the counselors in treatment had told her.
And tonight, for some reason, she was spilling her heart out.
"H...how did you do it? How could you stay clean *eleven* years? I've only been clean a couple of months...and it's driving me nuts already!" she said in wonderment.
"Well, first off, there are no *onlys* in recovery, Sayoko. You've been clean two months... which is a lot when you've never been clean before. To me, your two months is a major miracle! Especially when it's foremost in our addictive nature to deal with life by getting loaded. Believe it or not, I've had to go through a lot of the same inner turmoils that you're going through. It's part of the process. We all come from different walks of life...we've had different losses to deal with. We even used drugs differently. But pain is pain, regardless of the source. On a fundamental level, I'd like to believe that we all feel the same. Pain shared is pain lessened. Many times, I've had to do what you are doing right now. Many times! Having to tell on that demon inside of me that is tearing through my heart and making a mockery of my sanity. There's been times when my life feels so painful...that getting high seems to be the only better option. But it isn't! I was told early on: just don't use no matter what. No matter what!" Cevn encouraged her.
"Tell me more," Sayoko asked quietly, moved by his passionate words.
"Sayoko, I married a woman in recovery...and then she relapsed and went back to drugs. She *died* out there on the streets! A..and a part of my heart died with her. After she was dead, I just wanted to give up. I felt suicidal for months. But you know what...I didn't use. I didn't get loaded," he disclosed.
Sayoko was stunned...Cevn-sensei was *married* at one time?! And his former wife...had *died*? He'd always seemed to be so withdrawn around women, much worse than her younger brother. Could this be why?
"I think you're strong enough to deal with life on it's own terms...without using. You've already come this far...in my estimation, you're gonna make it!" he praised her. Sayoko smiled self-consciously at his compliment.
"By the way, *this* is the first Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Makuhari, Chiba Prefecture. You know that what we are doing right now is at the core of an NA meeting...caring and sharing honestly with each other. There are over 500 NA meetings all over Japan...a whole bunch in Tokyo alone! You realize that you'll need to hit the road and go to a lot of meetings, Sayoko. Besides the meetings, if you're at N.I.T. and you need to unload, you can drop by my office anytime to talk."
They sat together watching the stars, until Sayoko said, "Whew!"
A few silent moments later, she turned to look at Cevn, ready to discuss some more stuff. But during the silence, he had become really uptight. Sayoko worried for a moment that her attractive nature...was intimidating him.
Cevn, for his part, had felt anxiety around Sayoko from the first time he met her. He knew that this was due in part to his foreknowledge of her character from the manga. But he didn't expect to see a drugged-out Sayoko...she was every bit the inebriate that the manga portrayed her to be, with a strong dash of crazy crackhead chick thrown in for good measure. He remembered Keiichi's statement...how *he* had seen Sayoko as impossibly mired in the drug world.
Now she was different. Now she was clean. Almost all of their interactions had been governed by the teacher-student dynamic...but from now on, he knew that he needed to approach her as an equal. Sure, she would elevate him onto a pedestal...this was normal for a newcomer.
But, to his frustration, he was getting way too nervous during the lapses of silence. He just hoped that his anxieties wouldn't best him, especially at this sensitive time where she was just reintegrating back into society. He had all the confidence of an longtimer in recovery, but none of the confidence of a male friend.
Sayoko regarded him, sensing that she would need Cevn to be her friend, since there were no other recovering addicts in her life. Some stuff that she'd try to explain to 'normies' would just go by unacknowledged or misapprehended. Until she met some of the NA members in Tokyo, she would be on her own, so to speak. Sayoko watched the firmament painting the nightsky, then turned to her N.I.T. teacher, who had transformed from supportive friend...to a very shy man.
"What do I do about Genji? I mean...he's already in love with Megumi! I rode back with them from Haneda Airport...they act like they're a married couple, even if they were trying to downplay it because I was in the car. A big sister knows these things! The way they looked at each other says volumes about how they feel. Megumi is Keiichi's younger sister...and you know what *that* means!" she explained.
"I don't even know what I saw in Keiichi back then...he was just an ordinary guy with an extraordinary 'something' that I just couldn't put a finger on. I've known him all through high school and college...at least seven years. I used to hound myself trying to figure out what made Keiichi so special in comparison to all the other guys. But, be that as it may, I can't get it out of my head that Keiichi went for Belldandy instead of me..." she asked, then fleshed out her observations.
"Waitaminute! Don't start judging those two...you've spent years building a case against Belldandy just because she wound up with Keiichi. And look how far it got you! It only caused you to lose your friendship with Keiichi," Cevn commented dryly.
"Yeah...but..."
"...But there is much more going on then meets the eye with Keiichi and Belldandy. I might tell you about it someday, but you need to trust me on this one, Sayoko. As far as Megumi and Genji are concerned, you know in your heart what to do. Don't lie to yourself because your pride is disarming your common sense. Remember, *one must know the truth first...before they can conceal it with a lie!* And in the face of what the drugs did to your life, I think pride is a commodity you can ill afford right now. Start over," he suggested.
"Well, I'm two years older then Genji. He's a sophomore, I'm a senior. What should I do? In some ways I feel I'm way more mature than he is. How do I act around him at N.I.T.?" she asked. *This* had been a solid source of apprehension while she was in Okinawa...she had even roleplayed several encounters with her brother with her counselor.
"Don't ask me...I don't have a clue. All I do is teach there," he replied.
"But...Genji's *always* wanted a girlfriend! I used to taunt him about being single; calling him 'gay boy' and worse. It used to make him really upset. But, deep inside...I was worried. I've always had a natural knack at attracting boyfriends. But Genji...he must have been really lonely all these years. *Really* lonely. And I teased him...like an idiot!" she said, warred by her guilt.
"Sayoko, *start over*!" Cevn reiterated.
"How? After all this time...how can I?"
"Begin anew. With Genji and Megumi, with Keiichi and Belldandy...and yourself. *Especially* yourself. Just start over. Besides, it looks like you have some amends to make. I think the biggest amend you could make right now...would be to swallow your stubborn pride and accept what's transpired between Genji and Megumi. Megumi's a really sweet girl...and my guess is that she really respects you. After all, she showed up at our little intervention, remember? The 'this-is-your-fucked-up-life' party we held for you in my office at the end of last term?" he reminded her. Sayoko felt herself musing thoughtfully at this memory.
But something didn't make sense.
"Why *did* Megumi show up, then?" she asked.
"That's a no-brainer, Sayoko! Megumi was there...because she *cares for you*. She cares about your younger brother as well. Obviously, she more than cares for Genji. But most of all, she was there...because she was being personally harmed by your drug usage. If you don't believe me, ask her. She was one of the first ones who voiced a concern about your using. Megumi *wanted* you to get clean, just like everyone else in that room last June," Cevn answered, his tone of voice more a verbal challenge than a response.
"And you think she's *not good enough* for Genji," he let rip with sarcastic disgust.
Sayoko felt like the paint was peeled off of her ego with his sharp comment. She wanted to yell at him, her upper lip quivering in anger.
"Damn you! You're right!" she reluctantly admitted after fighting her rage down to a dull roar.
"I know I'm on target once in a while...and I sense that this is one of those times. What you have to decide is...what are *you* going to do about Genji and Megumi?" he asked.
"I have to think about it. I don't want them thinking that I'm giving my approval right after I find out that they're a 'unit'! She'll have to earn my trust!" Sayoko confidently voiced her convictions.
"That's more than fair. But, the cool thing is, you don't have to give them instant approval. I have something going on in my life that I can't talk about to everyone just yet...because the timing isn't right. But I *do* plan to talk about it, when the time comes."
"Why don't you tell *me*?" Sayoko asked, suddenly curious. Cevn was looking at her with a twinkle in his eye...evidently this 'surprise' had brought a joy to his life.
"Heh heh. I'd tell you right now, except for the fact that it involves another person. But I will tell you eventually...I promise! And you'll probably be surprised."
"You've found a girlfriend!" Sayoko guessed aloud, then smiled as she saw Cevn's whole body shudder in reaction to her intuitive guess. How typical...he actually believed that she wouldn't sense it!
"Orrroooo..." Cevn exclaimed, trying to imitate Rurouni Kenshin in an effort to amuse Sayoko...and change the subject.
"Cevn, you can't fool me! But, since there's *someone else involved*...I'll just have to wait! Anyway, there's one more thing I need to talk about. There's this guy..." Sayoko acknowledged. Since he'd all but admitted that he was in a relationship, she felt that she should let slip her own romantic predicament. She reluctantly broached this topic...but the staff at DART had told her that she needed to risk being honest. Besides, she felt that Cevn, as a fellow recovering addict, might be able to preserve her anonymity about this touchy subject.
The counselors at DART had pounded her with the fact that so many women come into recovery and immediately seek out male companionship because they feel vulnerable and inadequate by themselves. Often, they had *never* been without a man, and the men they had picked in the past...left much to be desired. They warned her that she could potentially substitute male affection for the drugs she just cleaned up from.
"Go for broke," she encouraged herself as she began.
"He wrote me every week, sometimes two letters a week. He's told me that he is interested in me...that he *really* likes me, as a matter of fact. I've written him back...telling him that I just want to be friends for now," Sayoko explained. This whole thing about men was confusing. It used to be so clear to her. Tease them, use them, keep them interested, act like a queen around them, intimidate them with her parent's wealth...but never let them get close.
But now...more than ever, she didn't know what to do.
"And how long will the 'for now' last?" he asked her.
"Well, my heart informs me that I really *do* like him. He's very masculine, strong, exotic in some ways. He's kind of a leader, but he has this crazy totally insane side as well. But he's been really thoughtful; that was a part of him that I never expected to see. He even sent me several 'care packages' while I was in treatment in Okinawa. Hey, I'm crazy...I might as well hook up with a crazy man," she said, humoring herself.
"Do you think you're ready to have a man in your life?"
"I don't know, yet!" she said, slapping the wooden decking with animate frustration.
"Then take your time. You'll have lots of personal stuff to work on...if it is meant to happen, it will."
"That sounds so...cliched, Cevn. I was expecting something profound," Sayoko said, feeling disappointed.
"*Love* is profound, Sayoko," he yawned. "At least, that's what Belldandy keeps saying."
"It's getting really late," she realized, yawning herself.
"I just want to thank you for proving to me that there is a better life without the use of drugs, Sayoko," he offered.
Sayoko felt part of her elan twinkling like a star as she thanked him again for helping her help herself. With a burst of gratitude, she kissed him on the cheek, then went into the living room.
Alone on the porch, Cevn chided himself...these 'late night sessions' were happening much too often. First Keiichi...now Sayoko. Who would be next?
"And how many cultural anthropologists have asserted over the years that the Japanese *weren't* a psychologically complex people?" he thought, amusing himself.

* * * * * * * *

"Hey, guys, I'm off for baseball practice!" Tomohisa shouted as he dashed through the living room, a bag containing baseball equipment strapped to his back. He was dressed in his high school baseball uniform; a metal baseball bat was slung casually over his shoulder as he headed out the door to go practice with his high school baseball club.
Bellkuld was busy cooking dinner in the kitchen. Because she was in Skuld's petite physical manifest/body, cooking and housekeeping were a major challenge. She found that she couldn't reach the higher shelves to get certain things. The *broom* was almost as tall as her! Bellkuld's sense of proportion was all askewed; she sometimes had to unfold a mini stepladder to help her reach supplies from the highest shelves.
"Tomohisa, before you go, could you please help me with this? I can't reach high enough to get it," she shouted through a cupped hand.
"Sure!" The high school student halted his exit and walked over, the plastic cleats of his shoes clacking against the tile floor like a railroad car. He smiled at Bellkuld and asked where he should reach up to.
"He's at least a *foot* taller than I am!" Bellkuld thought with a mixture of disappointment and distaste. Being in Skuld's body was definitely a handicap.
"Right there, Tomohisa," she pointed. "The canned peach juice, if you please..." She halted to steady herself as her legs turned rubbery.
"Ooooo, what's happening? I feel dizzy all of a sudden..." she said haltingly. Bellkuld's head felt like it was spinning as the kitchen seemed to be swallowed up by an invisible mouth. She sensed herself falling to the floor of the kitchen as if in slow motion; the tiled floor panels fading in and out...then amidst a fog-like mist, she saw a wobbly image of a computer screen and plastic crates filled with strange half-assembled...
"Hey, are you okay? I'm getting Cousin Keiichi!" she heard a voice ask. Bellkuld sensed a misting in her vision as her head spun in tight coils. She seemed to be in two places at once...then the familiar environs of her kitchen formed in her grayed...
"Belldandy!!!" Keiichi shouted with concern as Tomohisa pointed towards her. He was just heading to the kitchen to get a study break snack. He saw his girlfriend slumped against the wall of the kitchen, her head bobbing up and down woosily like a carp kite in a wind gust.
She felt a light slapping on her cheek, gentle and firm, as she came to. Keiichi was leaning over her, kneeling with his hands cupping her face. Her head felt like it was floating loose from the rest of her body as she returned to full awareness.
"Bell...are you okay?" Keiichi expressed his deep concern. "What happened?"
"I...I don't know what happened. I asked Tomohisa to help me get some things off the high shelves, then I felt *really dizzy* for a moment. The next thing I know, I was on the floor like this."
"Bell, you must have passed out!" Keiichi emphasized. He so much wanted to hug her, even if she was in Skuld's body. But he respected Skuld enough to...
He literally felt his hands shaking with indecision.

* * * * * * * *

Skuldandy was working on the microcomponent power amplifier unit, the Transdimensional Rectifier (Compact Model Mk V). This mecha project was more of an exercise for her talents than anything else...it held little value in practical terms. Her objective was to harness the interspatial energy created between Multiverse dimensionalities. Dimensionalities often collided...their 'friction' creating 'sparks' of energy. Her goal was to create a ratio of one terawatt/hour output for each cubic centimeter of mecha mass. A single terawatt/hour of energy was enough to power all of Japan for ten months! Not a huge challenge, but significant enough to sustain her interest.
But the *bonafide* challenge would come later, when Skuldandy would attempt to redesign her invention to harness *one exowatt* of energy for each cubic micron of its mass. If she was able to do this, she was sure to win the Yggdrasil Millennial Mechanistic Sciences contest! Especially since she was utilizing primitive Earthrealm mortal technology for the most part.
Suddenly, she started seeing stars. They danced around her field of vision like exploding novae...and soon *everything* was dancing. She couldn't feel her body...it was as if her physical form had slipped out from under her. The walls of her familiar mecha lab swirled and spun out intricate designs woven into the ceiling and the floor, as she noticed the wooden floor panels floating just out of reach...
She tried to move her head, but her eyes were locked on something that looked like a refrigerator...it was almost skipping in the air as if it was alive...like one of those children's cartoons that Big Sister would watch once in a while...the one's where the household appliances would come to life...
Nausea followed waves of dizziness as she gradually felt her body shrink in size...or *was* it her body? A moment later, she felt cloudy wisps fade away and she was back in her lab...flat on her back staring at the ceiling light fixture.
"What happened? I was just working on a power source...and next thing I know, I'm on out my back?" she wondered. Skuldandy was still too drained to sit up...she wanted to scream for her big sisters to come help her.
Everything felt like it was distant...and yet familiar.

* * * * * * * *

"Oh, Keiichi...it was so *weird*! I was scared...for a moment I thought I was in some kind of factory!" Bellkuld said weakly, her strength slowing seeping back in. Her eyes were flashing with an inner turmoil, the result of her strange fit of dizziness. A growing thumping in the hallway announced Urd as she literally sprinted into the dining room.
"What happened here?" Urd shouted. "I was in the bathroom and I heard a crash in Skuld's 'Skuld Labs' room! I went inside and I saw Skuldandy passed out cold on the floor. I tried to wake her up...but she's still out like a stone! Don't tell me it happened to you too!" Bellkuld weakly nodded her head in the affirmative, her long black hair fanned out over Keiichi's lap as he cradled her.
As soon as he heard Urd's report, Tomohisa went to check on Skuldandy. He knocked on her door, then slid it open to find her lying on the floor...

* * * * * * * *

Skuldandy felt her body shifting again...she caught a shadow-like figure of somebody (something?) out of the corner of her eye...then once more the sense of weightlessness suspended her...she found herself looking at someone (Keiichi?) who was leaning over her...then she looked at her feet...they seemed too small...*so* small...it was almost like she was in her *real* body for a moment!...then a roaring sound echoed in her ears as she felt herself ripped in TimeSpace...and then she heard a humming...and glancing over, she saw someone (Tomohisa?) walking out of her room...

* * * * * * * *

Keiichi watched in helpless perplexity and fear as Bellkuld rolled her eyes up and turned into a limp rag doll, falling over onto her side as all consciousness dimmed out of her.
Urd left to check on her youngest sister...she was confident that Bell was in good hands with Keiichi. She saw Tomohisa running up the hall, tossing his baseball bat on the couch as he sprinted over to the dining room to join his cousin.
Several tightrope-anxious minutes later, Bellkuld came to the second time. She felt like, for a moment, that somehow she was in her true body. Keiichi was still kneeling next to her, his warm brown eyes ushering support and concern...and worry. He was trying very hard not to manufacture additional apprehension...he face belied the fact that he was very distraught with his girlfriend's struggles.
Bellkuld looked down her front and noticed that she was still in Skuld's physical frame...

* * * * * * * *

Skuldandy managed to gain her feet with a steadying hand from Urd; the two walked into the kitchen to see Bellkuld and Keiichi sitting on the floor. Tomohisa rose up from nearby and came over to her.
"Skuldandy? You're okay!" he said with plain relief.
"I am *not* okay! I just had the most monster dizzy spell of my life! I was creating another work of genius, my wonderful Transdimensional Rectifier (Compact Model Mk. V) power generator. And...bam! I'm out totally out cold on my back! And for a second, I thought I was in *here* in the kitchen...in my *real* body! Then it happened again, just as I was returned into Belldandy's body!"
"What did you just say, Skuldandy?" Bellkuld asked. "I felt the same thing in a sense. Except that *I* was in your lab, in *my* own body..."
Everybody looked at each other with surprise!
Both Goddesses realized that, for a brief second or two, they were back in their own bodies! Hope and fear dawned on each face.
"Tomohisa!" they both said synchronously.
"Yes, that must be it, Skuldandy! When I was in the kitchen, I asked Tomohisa to help me get something down from a high shelf...then I felt dizzy..."
"Yeah yeah yeah! When I was laying on my back in my lab, Elder Sister, I was just coming to after being totally doofed out...and I thought I saw him walk in. Then when I came to the second time...and he was leaving my lab!" she observed.
"Could it be...that something about Tomohisa is causing you two to revert back to your true physical forms?" Keiichi finished.
"Let's try it! Tomohisa, can you stand between Bellkuld and Skuldandy?" he requested.
"Sure, lemme unload this bag of baseball stuff first..." Tomohisa said as he unstrapped his sports backpack and hefted it onto the couch, right on top of his baseball bat. He had been thoroughly confused by the recent events. It seemed that the last two times he went near either Bellkuld or Skuldandy, they would get dizzy spells. Then he heard them both confirm his suspicions.
"This is crazy...what could I have done to cause those two any problems?" he wondered, a little paranoid about being the center of so much attention. But he complied with his cousin's request and stood between the two.
Nothing happened.
"WHY! Why isn't it working now?" an anguished Skuldandy shouted. "It worked *before*!"
"Hmmm...obviously, something has changed between then and now," Urd offered, seeing that Skuldandy was about to blast off into the far reaches of the disappointment cosmos.
"But what's different now?" Tomohisa asked. "I was heading out the door to walk to the park for baseball practice when..." A mental neon sign lit up in his head.
"The equipment!"
"WHAT?" everybody chorused.
"I just left the equipment on the couch just now!" an excited Tomohisa emphasized, while the group looked at him with confused expressions. To prove his hunch, he walked over and picked up his bag of baseball equipment. He fully expected that when he returned to the kitchen, both Goddesses to dramatically relapse back into unconsciousness, as if on cue.
Nothing happened.
"Dammit!" Keiichi shouted, pounding the wall with the ham of his fist to emphasize his frustration.
"If what you both are saying is true, then why isn't it working? Why aren't you switching back to your rightful places?" Tomohisa wondered aloud in rapt frustration.
A moment later, his breath started wheezing...

* * * * * * * *

Bellkuld was straightening up the house, her face cast in sorrowful disappointment. She was trying to get a grip on herself, but she just became more depressed when she thought about the near-miss with Tomohisa. She *wanted* to be back in her own body! And for a moment, just like the proverbial golden ring, a chance to revert back to normal was suspended in the distance just beyond her grasp...
But with each passing hour...it seemed to drift further out of her reach.
"What if *normal* means that I'm in Skuld's body...forever?!" she wondered aloud to herself, fighting back tears. She looked around to see if anyone was in the room...she didn't want to lose her emotional composure in front of the others. She knew that Keiichi was studying, while Urd and Skuldandy were feverishly trying to analyze out what had happened.
Then she sat down on a couch and sobbed quietly to herself until her heartwrenching fears passed.
She remembered the end of their discussion earlier in the day. Tomohisa had gotten so worked up, he had an asthma attack. Fortunately, he was dressed for baseball, which meant that he had his inhaler in his uniform pants. After this, Urd seemed to get the idea that it was something about him that was causing the problem. And in a typical Urd-like bout of zeal, she had even gone as far as to suggest giving Tomohisa a full physical exam. But Bellkuld couldn't understand why Tomohisa blanched and then sprinted out of the room when Urd returned.
All she did was approach him with a rubber glove stretched over her right hand...

* * * * * * * *

Safe in his room from 'the Nurse in Pink', Tomohisa was caught up in all sorts of conjectures about recent events. He had bowed to peer pressure and skipped his baseball practice. Despite his fears of getting kicked off the team, he decided that he had made the right decision about staying home. He felt a near-guilty span of emotions...*something* about him was allowing the two Goddesses to briefly return to normal. But he didn't know what it was! Neither did the others. Then there was that damned grinning Urd with that rubber glove.
As soon as he saw *that*, he headed posthaste back to his room for shelter and bolted the door shut! Tomohisa could hear arguing in the kitchen while Genji and he discussed measures he could take to avoid getting an 'exam' from Urd.
When the inevitable knock on the door came, they were able to finally convince the elder Goddess that she should instead focus on recreating the events that lead up to the dizzy spells and the transference.
"Whew!" he thought as he returned his attention to his Jump manga anthology magazine.

* * * * * * * *

Bellkuld sat dejectedly at the dining room table after dinner. She wanted to go to Keiichi's room for comfort, a hug, a kiss, anything. But she couldn't...not without gravely offending her younger sister. Her sense of futility was overhanding her.
"I..if I'm trapped here, *forever*, how could Keiichi love me...in Skuld's body?" she kept worrying obsessively.
Bellkuld started crying again, tears drawing down her cheeks...Skuld's cheeks...as she tried to keep herself busy. The thoughts were too awful, and they were crashing around in her mind with overwhelming intensity.
Her heart felt heavy...
"If I straighten the house up, it'll take my mind off this...terrible situation," she reasoned.
Bellkuld stood up, spied an object on the couch and went over to pick it up. A familiar dizziness spread over her and she gasped as she fainted onto the couch.

* * * * * * * *

"So it wasn't Tomohisa...it was his *baseball bat*?" Keiichi questioned matter-of-factly. "How incredibly bizarre!"
He recalled the events of the accidental discovery...

Taking a break from his homework, he had found Bellkuld passed out on the couch next to the bat. From her recollection, she was just straightening up the living room when she tried to pick up the bat. Meanwhile, Skuldandy and Urd had been working to solve the mystery of what had happened earlier in the evening, when Skuldandy just went limp and fell into her sister's lap in mid-sentence.
When everybody had reconvened late into the evening, Keiichi had arrived at the utterly inane-but-obvious conclusion that it was the *baseball bat* which had caused the temporary reversal of the body exchange spell! It was totally implausible...but this conclusion was the only reasonable explanation. To verify his suspicion, he asked the three Goddesses to sit at the dinner table while he approached them with the bat.
Bellkuld and Skuldandy promptly passed out.
The only problem was...even if he left the baseball bat between the two, the dizziness and partial exchange of bodies only lasted a moment.

* * * * * * * *

Keiichi listened to the dialoguing as the Goddesses were engaged in conference in the dining room. Cevn had returned late from N.I.T. and immediately went to bed, exhausted after his overnighter with Sayoko. He wouldn't be much help.
Genji and Megumi were trying to calm down a disappointed Tomohisa. After an hour or so, the two announced that they were going to spend the night helping Sayoko settle back in at her parent's mansion house. He recalled that Sayoko had told him earlier today during breakfast that she was seriously considering getting her own apartment. Being at her parent's house was too lonely, she reasoned, especially if Genji was going to live part-time here at the temple compound.
Keiichi was glad that she had made a prompt decision...Sayoko's continuing presence in the temple home would only complicate an already impossible situation. Bell-chan and Skuldandy had to stay in their bedroom while she was up and around the house.
Sayoko didn't know about the Goddesses yet.
Genji had agreed to her idea, and offered to divide his living arrangements between stayovers here and living back at his parent's house. Keiichi noticed that Megumi was visibly upset at this development, but his sister bore her disappointment well. He looked at Bellkuld, who was gesturing with her hands to accent a point she was about to make.
Urd elbowed him...he was ignoring the discussion.
"...Yes, Urd. But this presents another dilemma. Skuld is the only one who can scientifically examine the bat to figure out *why* it reverses the spell...and she can't be in proximity to it because the unknown effect will make *her* pass out," Bellkuld summarized.
Skuldandy was the epitome of frustration. Arms tightly clenched, she was sitting on a zabuton, rocking back and forth with anxiety.
Urd watched her youngest sister, in her younger sister's body...looking like she was ready to explode in the face of the limitations of this situation. Suddenly, Skuldandy smiled and looked at her.
"*You're* going to do it!" she announced, pointing at Urd.
"ME?! I..I'm a total klutz when it comes to scientific analysis! You know me...the Elder Norn: Sorceress of arcane magicks, Mistress of the Lightning Bolt, Keeperess of the Well of Urd...and a total technophobe! Naw...it won't work!" Urd said, attempting to justify her reluctance.
"It *WILL* work! I'll network Keiichi's computer with mine...and I can arrange for Banpei and Sigel to assist you. I'll watch you from his "Keiichi's Shop" room at a safe distance. That way, I won't have to be near the baseball bat. You can follow my orders and perform the kinds of tests that *I* would normally employ, in order to find out what property of Tomohisa's bat..."
"*Me* follow *your* orders?" Urd snarled defiantly. With mounting tension, she considered the sheer humiliation of having to take *orders* from her little bratty sister. This filled her with a blunt disgruntlement.
"But I'll do anything to fix Belldandy and Skuld's problem...even if it means having to swallow my pride and let the little curmudgeon tell me what to do," she decided, desperate to resolve this fucked up situation. She realized that this would be a major sacrifice, however. Her want of expertise in technological and robot-mecha matters would make her look like a proper idiot in front of everyone, a position she was loath to be placed in. Under any other circumstances, this would be out of the question. As a Sysop for the Yggdrasil Mainframe, she exclusively worked on casting programs of the mathematic and arcanic kind...she never was trained to do any types of 'hardware' or 'firmware' duties. She could run a section of the ultra-sophisticated Mainframe; but she didn't have the slightest idea of the technology that went into its construction. And now she was being asked to use machines in a way she was unaccustomed to.
But...
"Okay...but only because I want you back into your own body, so I can properly pick on you again," she reluctantly agreed. "And if you even so much as *once* make fun of my inability to operate mechas...the whole thing is off! Understood?" she demanded.
Skuldandy stuck out her tongue and pulled her eyelids down.
"Dear me! Even though you are in Belldandy's body...you can *still* make an ugly face! Ha ha h..ouch!!!" Urd said as she felt a *thump!* on the side of her head as Skuldandy rapped her with a rolled up magazine.
"She sure can hit harder now that she's in an adult body!" Urd observed, rubbing her head. She noticed the scowl on Bellkuld's face and giggled at the sight...Bell's scowl made it look almost as if Skuld *was* back in her own body!
"Bellkuld, you sure *look like* a little brat!" Urd taunted, quickly covering her hand over her mouth to smooth away a laugh.
"Skuld, may I have a turn with that magazine?" Bellkuld insisted.
"Er...why don't you all get to sleep, and we can work on this problem tomorrow," Keiichi suggested diplomatically. He could see into the future...very clearly. All three sisters were combatively stressed out and irritable. It would be better if they got off to a fresh start tomorrow.
Better yet, it would be *safe*...as his prognostications revealed vivid visions of the ultimate sibling catfight...

* * * * * * * *

"Here's the plan. First, we seek out what it is about Tomohisa's bat that caused us to switch back to our proper places. Next, I will mix up a clone from that plant remnant that we saved from the Black Orchid. Third, we'll try and combine the two processes so we can make sure that it reverses the spell," Urd pointed out.
Skuldandy was disappointed...her carefully laid plans to try and reverse the spell had been thwarted by the accidental discovery they had made two days ago. Instead of being able to address the problem from a sequential, logical perspective...she would have to rely on chance...and Urd. Being an creator/assembler of mechas, the lack of a structured method of doing things left her out of her element.
Nevertheless, Skuldandy was anxiously anticipating the results of their research into the bat's properties as she sequenced a flowchart to methodically research its secrets.

* * * * * * * *

After several hours in "Skuld Labs", Urd was feeling very put upon. Following Skuldandy's instructions, she had been able to run a variety of tests on the bat: mass spectrometry, caustic chemical analysis, electromagnetic and nuclear scans, xyxiological phase balancing, aquantum series, tensile properties, thermal extremes, molecular scans and chronotron-node dimension scalars.
Each new battery of experiments required a walkthrough by Skuldandy, accompanied by a series of miscues and errors on her part. This inevitably resulted in sheer frustration on the part of an impatient Skuldandy. Several times, Skuldandy had screamed brat-fits at her, which Urd could hear clearly over the room speakers they had set up courtesy of Cevn's music studio.
Urd finally snapped, screaming back at her youngest sister in a transport of lividity...and then stormed out of "Skuld Labs".
In Keiichi's study room, Skuldandy felt conflicted...torn between guilt and rage. Thankfully, Bellkuld had kind words of comfort for her. She reminded Skuldandy that Urd wasn't as adept as she was regarding technological matters.
But Bellkuld was also feeling impatient. She wanted Skuldandy to quickly distinguish the unique attribute of Tomohisa's bat...the one that they could use to restore normalcy to their lives. Besides, this situation of Skuldandy 'tutoring' Urd...bordered on anguishible torture.

* * * * * * * *

Skuldandy looked at the holo in her lab room. She was still somewhat upset at Urd...but this was tempered by the realization of what a big favor her oldest sister had done for her. It had been a *must-do* situation for Urd; otherwise there would be little chance that she could have a database to examine. Without Urd's help, she couldn't be poring over the raw data like she was doing at the moment. Hopefully, with all this information, Skuldandy could 'tame the lightning', so to speak, and make the anomaly of the baseball bat into a permanent cure.
"Tame the lighting?" she thought to herself, the idea piercing her mind like a quill. She pulled up several displays on Keiichi's computer screen. There was something odd...something slightly familiar about the electromagnetic properties...
"There!" she shouted with glee, pointing at the monitor.
There was a trace of Molybdenum!
Molybdenum was a hard metal that was fluxed into metallic alloys to strengthen steel metal admixtures. But one of its properties, unknown to the humans of course, was that it possessed trace amounts of Ixodenum. Ixodenum was a subnuclear EMA (electro-magnetic-arcane) field that existed within Molybdenum. The same Ixodenum that was present in Skuld's own mallet, Mjolnir. Ixodenum was one of over a thousand metal alloys in her mallet, all held together by an atomic singularity designed to forge the whole into the shape of a mallet. The singularity was housed in the circular bulb at the base of Mjolnir.
"The same singularity could be harnessed as a 'collector' of Ixodenum!" she said aloud to herself excitedly. Skuldandy rushed into the dining room to inform Big Sister and Bellkuld about her insight. She tapped her forehead with the palm of her hand as if to signal "duh!, how obvious!" as she explained her discovery to her two sisters.
"So what we need to do is mount Mjolnir up on the roof, and wait for a lightning strike! When it is charged adequately, then the transference field will be duplicated...hopefully for as long as we need. Then you can use that clone you're cooking up, and we should be back in our own bodies at last!" Skuldandy explained with joyful excitement.
Belldandy and Skuld had been in each other's body *too* long! Bellkuld looked up at her little sister with a hopeful expression.
"But how do we get a lightning bolt strike? Grrrr...if the Big Meany hadn't taken my license away, then it would just be a matter of getting Keiichi to put your mallet on the roof...and **Zap**, instant charged Mjolnir!" Urd said angrily.
"Careful Urd, you never know when He's listening in," Bellkuld cautioned. Urd cowered briefly at Bellkuld's remark, drawing a fit of laughter from Skuldandy. She had watched this particular scene played out dozens of times over the millennia. Each time Urd got her license suspended, she would engender a hostile attitude towards the Almighty...and Bell would remind her to be cautious. Whereupon Urd would get this look of sheer *panic* on her face, just for a few seconds, but enough to thoroughly amuse Skuldandy. Skuldandy secretly suspected that each outburst of Urd's added to the length of her license suspension...as if the Lord was keeping some kind of cosmic stopwatch on Big Sister. She grinned at Bellkuld, who was looking into space with a trance-like expression.
The more Bellkuld thought about it, the more sense it made that He had suspended both Skuld and Urd's licenses. They all needed to rely more on intuition and insight...and less on their magical powers. Each time they were in a fix, one of the three sisters would have a flash of awareness that would solve the problem.
"And what's important...is that these resolutions require us to work as a *team*," she realized profoundly.

* * * * * * * *

Keiichi was up on the roof, pausing in his work. Being on the roof visually cued him towards past remembrances. Several times he had fallen from the roof: by accident; by Banpei; and by Mara.
The roof...

...between hammerfalls, Keiichi distinctly recalled the time Banpei went haywire and used him for target practice while he was replacing some of the hon-gawara, or true roof tiles. Of course, Bell-chan could have fixed the roof with one wave of her lithesome hand; but Keiichi was into one of his 'man of the house' phases at the time, and clambered up on the roof to retile the antique-style temple. Banpei had been rained on several times, and apparently (as Skuld accorded after the fact), the rain had somehow penetrated his waterproof exo-armor and fused the human and Demon detection circuits. Keiichi was halfway up the roof when an explosion two feet away hurled him rolling down the slope of the roof. He had managed a last-gasp handhold on the eaves as Banpei was readying another barrage.
Then he remembered the rest of the incident. Belldandy had barely reached him in time as he fell. With a quick gesture of her hands, gravity was opposed and he floated slowly and safely to the ground. After her initial panic at his near-accident, she joked with him about it.
"Isn't it wonderful, dear? Because of Banpei, you have a much bigger job to complete on the roof! This will help you even further towards feeling like you're more of a 'man of the house'. Which is good...since you feel that you need to be a man so much, Keiichi," she had said...

...his attention drawn back to the present by a gust of wind, Keiichi recalled that he didn't even touch *that* one with anything more than a hanghead posture, while Bell-chan had turned red-faced with guilt. Looking out over the neighboring Makuhari environs, his mind returned to the work at hand.
"So, once again, art imitates life. Here I am, once more up on the damned roof!" he cursed, struggling to prop up the mast which would suspend Mjolnir a good ten meters above the temple roofline. He could almost imagine in his mind's eye what passersby would think...a college student mounting a flagpole capped with a hammer onto the very edge of the roofbeam.
"Sheer madness!" he suspected that they would conclude.
He *did* remember Bell's injunction to him to be extra cautious.
"Please, Keiichi, be careful...if you were to ever to fall and hurt yourself, I don't know if I could live with myself!" she had said, very serious despite wearing Skuld's girl-face.
His task completed, Keiichi shimmied over to the eaves and cautiously sat down at the edge of the roof. From his vantagepoint, he could see much of suburban oceanside Makuhari...and a beautiful sunset. He had planned on the witnessing the latter, and was glad that he did. He stood up and stepped down the ladder before it got too dark.

* * * * * * * *

A close scrutiny of the webcast weather report now became the prime interest of the house. Frequent arguments arose between Urd, the Ninjettes, and her sisters over the use of the several TV sets in the house for soap operas. Hourly weather updates were being broadcast in the afternoon and evening, which they wanted to watch. Skuldandy was particularly boisterous, and at one point, had disabled all the remote controls in the house to default to the Weather Channel. Urd ended up smashing all of the remotes in a rueful fit to spite her youngest sister, while Bellkuld retreated to the safety of Keiichi's bedroom.
Two weeks and one autumn thunderstorm later, it was mid-October. The weather had been extremely humid...the akisame zensen or fall rainy fronts of September had passed through without producing any spectacular atmospheric lightshows. Now it was getting progressively cooler as Japan was gripped by an autumnal climate.
With dimming spirits, Keiichi knew that this far into October, the weather conditions would be very placid, with hardly any rains. Already, the leaves were starting to raiment themselves in their gold and rouge attire.
So he half-heartedly wished for a typhoon.

* * * * * * * *