trans_9 | And We're Gonna Pull Through [Bendytimed to After System Shock]

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And We're Gonna Pull Through [Bendytimed to After System Shock]

It's probably a solid two weeks before Christmas is due, assuming that their Thanksgiving dinner was on schedule which, given the nature of the ship, it presumably wasn't. But the robot attack was terrifying and disheartening and exhausting, and Howard wants a holiday, so according to him, it's Christmas. A nice, relaxing break from things trying to kill them.

Aside from this strand of Christmas lights doing its damnedest to strangle him, that is. Howard's managed to get it around his neck, and if it weren't for the fact that finding light strands is hard enough on Stacy, would be cutting it off with scissors.

He's still a bit beat-up, bandages around his head and his knees and one looping around his torso, under his shirt, but thanks to the healers and medical technology on Stacy he's not in much pain. His foot being in a brace is the worst of it.

He's managed to salvage an old plastic tree from a run-down building. A few packets of hot cocoa from the Warehouse sit on the table. Flossy Raptor is downstairs and dressed in a Santa hat and bizarrely, a feather boa in a shade of green too lime-ish to be Christmassy. A clunky-looking dog-sized gift for Zouichi is by the couch, wrapped in tin foil and newsprint, and another is on the table for Karis, although it's unwrapped. No one else quite makes Howard's list this year.

He pulls his way out of the tangle of lights. Christmas numero dos sans his family. Christmas numero uno on Stacy. He finds he's less okay with the former than he was last year, but more okay with the latter than he'd presumed.

Anyone who walks into the kitchen of the Susono Inn will be greeted by the rare and unusual sound of Howard humming. Go Tell It On the Mountain, actually. He even sings the section of the first verse that he vaguely remembers under his breath.

"Go tell it on the mountain, up over the hills and everywhere, go tell it on the mountain, tell them something, I don't care."

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Kaya needed a break. Between the attack, losing Zhin and finding out that Negi, the only little brother she had on the ship was gone, it was important for her to try and find things to make her happy. Sure, there was Billy and Ronnae she was staying with, and seeing Nokosi anytime was good, but her heart had been feeling heavy nonetheless.

She took the wandering the ship, as she was inclined to do a time like this, and was happy to find an inn she hadn't been to before, and more than pleased to see Howard, although her first instinct was to make sure he was recovering comfortably.

"Hey," she greeted him, a small smile on her face. "Sounds like you're keeping busy. It's...Christmas time, right?"

"I don't know. Close enough." No, Kaya, he didn't get you any presents. Don't take it personally. "Figured I kind of needed it anyway, though. Since pretty much everything about the last week sucked."

Kaya's looking a little worse for the wear, too. Like maybe she got even more roughed up by the whole thing than he did.

Kaya definitely had no problem not getting a present: with all of the things that had happened to them lately, Kaya had pretty much loss track of time. "You can say that again. I haven't seen an enemy like that since the Nightmare King, and that was the first time I saw a Terminator. I NEVER thought I would see those horrible things again."

But she had, along with those scary, crazy robots from Jamie's world and a host of other evil robots. She has recovered from most of her bruises and cuts, though emotionally she still looked fairly battered.

"How did you fair?"

"I'm so glad I missed out on the Nightmare King thing. This was enough excitement for me." He considers asking her if she's alright, but he figures if Bubbles wants to tell him anything then she would let it happen naturally. She's not the type to keep her emotions as under wraps as he does.

"Alright. Got a nasty concussion and a third degree burn. Nearly died like, eight times." He points down as his foot, still in the brace. "Breaking my ankle was the worst part."

That's a lie. The worst part was realizing, really realizing, how mortal Zouichi was. Or possibly being certain he was about to die in that MRI machine.

"Well picture it Howard: everyone's nightmares feeding this evil creature that started to make all of our worst fears come true. Not fun. But this was a whole new level of evil. That thing, that person just wanted to make others suffer. It was sick. I...I lost my friend in the fight. People would say it was just a dog, but Zhin was more than that. She protected me, was by my side. She could sense when I was sad. And that rotten, horrible creature just killed her, and many others, just because it could."

She sighed. "You look like you could be doing better, actually. I finally got the metal parts cleaned out of my water: I could give you a little bit of healing. But I have to apologize to you, don't I? you're much braver than I thought you were."

And here, even feeling as rotten as she had been the last few days, she smiled.

Howard isn't sure how to respond to Kaya's outpouring of emotion over a dog. He glances over to where his cat is sleeping, nestled between the presents Zouichi wrapped. On one hand it's hard to feel sympathy for Kaya - it's a dog, be glad it wasn't a person, we had to eat dogs back home - and on the other, wouldn't he have been upset if SHODAN killed Emergency Rations? If only because the cat is something that's his, to keep, protect and control, and he would feel violated for someone to use death to assert otherwise.

"I'm sorry." Because he doesn't know what else to say. He keeps decorating the tree.

"And no, I'm not brave. I'm fine, actually. Everything's healing up naturally. I'm going to get an awesome scar from the headwound, though."

He has to keep asserting he isn't so people don't expect him to keep engaging in boneheaded acts of heroism.

It was her own fault for not explaining what Zhin had actually been able to do, or how she had been one of the animals recovered from an Ohm attack. In a way, Kaya had seen that as the start of a way to strengthen those who were against the Ohm, and when she realized that Zhin could actually telepathically understand her, it had made her all the more pleased to be around her companion. It was a lot like Aang's Appa, only Kaya had never said it aloud. Losing Zhin had been a lot like losing a friend, only people just saw it as her losing a pet.

"It's fine. I get its weird to other people. But that's ok."

She grinned in spite of herself. "So you just happened to be doing some brave things, huh? Luck really tends to do some funny things to you, Howard."

Howard nods. It's not that he doesn't want to empathize (although there is that, too), it's that he can't. There's a reason he gave the cat the name it has, and that's because he doesn't want to get close enough to it to forget that in case of emergency, the cat goes first.

"I didn't do anything brave. I ran away from robots. Do I need to put a dictionary in your hands?"

Normally this wouldn't have bothered Kaya. She was usually trying to keep the peace, and with Howard, who she was fond of, she would at least try to get at why he was upset.

This was not one of those times.

"No you don't," she said icily. "And you can keep your sarcasm to yourself, thank you. It might be all the same, but being a hero isn't all its cracked up to be either. People laugh at you if something bad happens as if you deserve it, when all you want to do is help. And when bad things happen, there's no explanation. It's a wonderful life!"

She spat this out bitterly, putting a hand to her head. Never mind the guilt she felt that even while Zhin had died protecting her and all those dead, it was Negi's podding that hurt worst of all.

"Hey, you were the one who walked into my home, princess. And don't get that whole put-upon hero schtick on me. You think it's hard being a hero? Try not being one, but having everyone either insist that you are or you should be. It kind of blows."

He goes back to disentangling the lights. "You can show yourself out."

"Fine, sorry," she muttered, looking forlorn. So much for trying to be friendly....it just came back to this. "You can be whatever you want to be, it doesn't really matter, does it? Hero, not a hero? All that's going to happen is people are going to disappear. So maybe your way is easier. And you can be whatever you want. I just...I wanted to be with a friend. I didn't want to be alone."

Howard winces when Kaya says that people disappear. "I'm not your friend."

And then, hearing how awful that sounds, he adds, "but you're not alone."

Kaya was quiet. "So...how does this Christmas thing work."

Anything to just not think would be fine. She just wanted to not think about stuff now.

"Well, supposedly it's some bullshit about the birth of Jesus." Howard fails to care about religion. "But mostly people give each other presents and decorate a tree and put twinkly lights everywhere. It's pretty."

"Oh yeah," Kaya said quietly. "I remember that, from...maybe two cycles ago. Around this time we went to a planet that was a lot like earth. There was some holidays going on, and we went and were helping poor people and stuff."

She walked over, helping him with the lights. "Did you want a gift?"

"That is so typically you." He rolls his eyes at her. Helping poor people.

"I'm not expecting one, no. Here, help me wrap this around."

"There's nothing wrong with making sure people help the less fortunate to enjoy those holidays," Kaya said. "Man, you can be crabby. We all had some strange mission, all in the names of certain holidays then. Our was...let me see if I got that name right....mmm...Eid Ul Fitr. Other people had different ones, helping that Santa guy, I think. Some of there's were pretty outlandish, I was glad to have the more normal one."

She walked over, helping him with wrapping the lights. "Didn't you have something similar like this on Christmas?"

"That German? I never heard of it before." Although Santa? Really? Then again, why wouldn't Santa exist, with everything else.

"I wasn't here last Christmas, and the one before that was back in the FAYZ, so...not much celebrating. Not much spirit in the season if you're down to eating cockroaches, you know."

"I think it was...Farsi? I forget, but the place we were supposed to be was what they call the Middle East on Earth. I had to wear clothes that mostly covered me and everything. But it was worth going, I think."

Kaya made a face. "Good grief, roaches? If you'd told me THAT I would have at least attempted to cook you something around this time of the year. That sounds like a horrible memory."

"Sounds tense. Why would you want to help people who tell you what to wear?"

Howard shrugs. "Most of them are. It's way better here. That's why I don't get it when people bitch about the slop."

"It's one of those missions where you don't have to like what the rules are, just go with it for that one day. I'd rather help out a whole bunch of people in disguise than make a lot of noise about something as small as showing myself. My first teacher actually did something like that once."

Kaya laughed. "I don't think most of them are accustomed to having had to eat roaches, so it comes as a bit of a shock."

"You're such a goody two shoes. Seriously. You should get your sugar gland checked." He rolls his eyes, but it's more good-natured this time.

"Most people just take it for granted. It seriously pisses me off." He sounds sad as he says that.

"Well excuse me for being a good person!" Kaya shot back, who actually wasn't offended at all. Really, the way they argued was a little bit like Jamie and her when they first met.

"I guess the genuine idea is if they have to lose everything they know and love and be stuck on Stacy, the very least they can get is food they can savor. I can share your anger though, since they do almost nothing to actually make that happen! Good food doesn't make itself!"

Howard shakes his head. "You'd think that if you lose everything you know and love, which admittedly for some of us isn't a hell of a lot, you'd have bigger concerns than the food. It just makes me feel crazy, is all. For not caring."

He sounds actually sad when he says that. The food issue is just one of many that makes him feel different and isolated on the ship.

Even Kaya had to admit to herself that Howard had a point. She could try and defend it, but food not being as good as back home had little to no real relevance to her. Sure, she'd found way to get access to better food, but it had never been something she thought was worth actually complaining about.

"Maybe it just makes them feel a little more in control of themselves, complaining about something small. It's little things like that, I think, that stop some people from losing it."

And We're Gonna Pull Through [Bendytimed to After System Shock]

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