Chapter 7 - "Turbulent Winds Can Crumble Sturdy Houses,Yet A Strong Foundation Can Stand Against The Storm. "

"Pass the dip!" Benitsubasa yells a second before snatching it out of Hans's fingers. "There's nothing like blue cheese on pizza!"

I blow a sigh and turn to my... friend? Are the two of us friends? We've certainly been through hell, so I wouldn't say we're just acquaintances. But... friends?

...

"Sorry," I whisper and get a sheepish smile back from him.

He shrugs and grabs another slice of the pizza, specifically, the ones that have pineapple.

"We wouldn't have had such a good meal without her, so no worries," he says with a chuckle.

I let out an amused laugh. He's right about that. Benitsubasa's the only one that can speak Japanese. She's the one that ordered the pizza.

"You've got that right!" my "Sekirei," says confidently. "You damn took the one thing I had from me, stupid Ashikabi!"

Benutsubasa growls and continues stuffing her face.

"The least you can do is let me eat away the pain!"

I sigh.

"Look, I didn't mean to-"

She holds up a hand.

"As I said, I don't care." I watch as she rolls up an entire slice of pizza and then shoves it into her mouth. The sight is both disturbing and amazing.

...

"I might not like it, but you're my Ashikabi," she blows another sigh and shakes her head. A small, bittersweet smile tugs at her lips. "They say nothing good can come without sacrifice, and if that means quitting, then it's alright."

I hadn't even said more than a few words, yet she already knows that I'd sooner cut off my leg than work for MBI? Or is this something else?

The beating of tiny bird wings pulses against my ears. Silent, ephemeral, yet the sensation washes over my entire being. I stare into her tiny orbs, losing myself in those pink oceans. I could gaze into them for hours and never feel bored. Yeah. Just like floating atop still waters, my limbs soon start to grow numb.

I am at peace. Tranquillity surrounds me and nothing can-

"Are you two ok?" Hans's voice snaps me out of my trance. Opposite to me, on the other side of the table, Benitsubasa shakes her head. She rubs the daze out of her eyes and gives me a quizzical look.

"You're not a normal Ashikabi, right?" she starts. "I don't know why, but it's as if I can read your mind at times. Not only that, but it feels like you're always by my side, wrapping your arms around me."

I nearly miss the tiny strip of pink on her cheeks as she says that. A growl rumbles through the room and the moment of cute bashfulness is gone.

"I'm going to start the next one," Benitsubasa says with a huff as she opens another box of pizza. This time it's the veggie and mushroom combo.

A small bit of drool rolls down Hans's face, much like my "Sekirei."

The two are surprisingly similar despite being so different.

I chuckle and grab a slice for myself.

First, let's fill our bellies. When that's done, we'll talk strategy.

-----------

As it turns out, Hans knows a bit about this world too, though not nearly as much as me. Then again, is the difference between a spoonful of water and a single drop really all that big when compared to the ocean?

No.

He knew names and events that would probably never happen now, but that was about it. The future had been changed, and honestly, I had no idea how far we were from the "starting" point. A few days? A few weeks? Months? Reading stories about this sort of stuff and finding myself in something similar are two completely different beings.

I knew the broad strokes of the first arc, but the truly important details were nothing but a blur. The address and name of that inn, the important dates and locations of note. All that came up when I thought about those was a big blank. No normal person is expected to remember all of those, so of course, no one would actually bother putting them in a stupid show of all things.

Suffice to say, Hans and I were blind to anything that was coming our way. We could make guesses, but so could anyone else. Rather than trying to change the future or do something noble, right now what we needed to do was survive.

The biggest obstacle for that was currently the MBI and the Sekirei games. There was also the weird robots and whatever brought us to this world. Just thinking about everything gave me a headache. Stress was a hell of a thing and Hans was feeling it just as much as I.

"I'm going to go use the bathroom." He said slowly.

And so, there was just me and Benitsubasa.

The reality of the situation was finally starting to set in. This girl was a creature born to fight and genetically altered to bond to a human. Karasuba was proof enough that she didn't need to follow my words like gospel, but there was still far more weight to them than a normal person's. And then there was that devotion in her eyes. Love? Affection? Lust? What could I even call it?

Love isn't something that's born in just a few moments...

Then again, psychics aren't real. Bonds that transcend the flesh and draw to people closer than humanly possible shouldn't exist either.

"You're overthinking this."

Her words were like a bucket of cold water. Benitsubasa reached out and grabbed my half-eaten slice of pizza.

"I'm me an you're you," she said with a small smile and took a bite out from the very spot I'd eaten from. A small bit of pink flashed onto her cheeks. "Don't be an idiot and listen- not to my voice, but to me."

Her words were a jumbled mess, but her voice was not. I shut my eyes and listened. A song that shook the earth and made my muscles tremble coursed through your mind. Like the gentle tapping of rain on a window, it soothed the horrid thoughts and terror building within me. For a little bit, I felt like everything would be fine.

But, most importantly, I heard Benitsubasa's song loud and clear. Regardless of what her origins might have been, her feelings were her own. She was a tiny songbird flying high in the sky, free of anything that could possibly bind her. Nurtured and raised to search for her one and only, she searched the skies above. Should she wished, she could flap those tiny wings of hers and reach even the stars up in the night sky. Yet, instead, she had chosen to turn her gaze downward and found a perch on my shoulder.

That had to mean something, right?

---------

Hans came back with a weak smile on his face. Though he'd tried to hide it, my nose picked up the nearly faded scent of bile. He wasn't one to handle stress very well, it seemed, but then again, neither was I.

Silence hung over the table. No matter what, we wouldn't be working for the sick people that pitted loved ones against one another. No one said a word, but we could all feel it.

Then, what were our other options? Fight back? No, not now. We were weak and inexperienced.

Run? It had a better chance of working, but it still ran into the problem of facing the full might of the MBI.

Then what did that leave us?

Stand our ground, bide our time and strike when we've gained power?

It seemed like the only right thing to do, but was it?

=========

In the end, there really was only one choice. We would stand our ground and slowly build ourselves up. Sekirei were superhumans that could take on even the strongest of martial artists by themselves. Even a normal squad of armed men would find themselves splattered against a wall.

However, we were more than that. We had powers that could defy logic, just like Sekirei. There was one difference, though. I could feel it in the back of my mind- the low buzzing of insects slowly rising in volume. We'd only touched the tip of the iceberg when it came to our abilities, and given enough time, nothing could stop us.

I didn't know how or why I felt like that, but just like I knew the sky was blue, I knew that we could get strong enough that nothing would stop us. The only obstacle before us was ourselves and how much we were willing to work for it.

Of course, I wasn't going to bank on that alone. We needed time to reach our peaks, but I had no idea how long that would take. Yet, there was more than one avenue for power, wasn't there? The Sekirei would make great vanguards to keep us safe while we grew. As embarrassing as it sounded, we needed a bunch of girls to keep us safe until we were strong enough.

The first thing on my mind, though, was experimenting with my powers. What were my limits? What else could I do? What about Hans? Did he have anything else he didn't know about?

There were so many questions and I wanted answers.

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

"Huh, this is actually kinda relaxing," Benitsubasa said with a yawn as she floated in the air. "How high can you lift me up?"

That was a good question, but not the only one. I reached out with my invisible hands, grabbing some loose rocks and water bottles. At the same time, I pushed Benitsubasa higher and higher.

"Lift me too," Hans said with a smile. "I like looking down at things from high up."

I nodded and did just that. Soon, the two were about ten stories up. It was around the twentieth story that I felt my control slowly starting to slip. Like trying to hold a fifty-pound weight over my head for longer than five minutes, my "arms" were getting tired. Sweat started to roll down my face, so I did the sensible thing and brought the two down.

A few more tests revealed what I suspected. I had a range limit and a maximum amount of weight I could lift. I wouldn't be throwing around buildings, but a regular school bus would be fine. Number wise, there really didn't seem to be a maximum at first. That changed when Hans pulled out a sheet of paper and cut it up into a hundred pieces. He repeated this about another five times before a hammer started pounding against my skull. Keeping track of everything was like trying to watch five different TV shows at once while trying to still get a feel of what each one was showing.

Thankfully, my other powers were far easier to test than Telekinesis. Like Hans, I could make constructs out of the psychic energy within me. They seemed to be limited to the size of a large spear, but aside from that, anything was fair game. Imagination counted for a lot, and frankly, Hans was some kind of crazy. He took to this power like a fish to water, forming all sorts of weird creations like a sword that lashed out similarly to a frog's tongue. But honestly, there were a lot of things to borrow from shows I had watched. Still, the more complex we got with our creations, the longer it took to bring them out and the more focus they required.

After that, I tested out how much I could heal with my Biokenisis as I was calling it. It wasn't just a blanket healing ability, after all. I could stir life within plants and make them grow incredibly quickly. But, that wasn't all. If I pressed my hand up against someone and focused hard enough that my head started to hurt, I could actually change things about their body. For example, I turned Han's hair blue, then green, and then back to his normal colour.

"Can you make me taller?" Benitsubasa asked, so I went ahead and tried it. Suffice to say, she towered over the two of us but was also a lot skinnier. She quickly asked to go back and then spent a good few minutes gazing down at her chest. Yeah, it didn't take a genius to know what she wanted, but she never asked.

Moving on, Hans and I tried to see how "strong" we were. There was a very thin layer of psychic energy surrounding us. It let us run faster, punch harder, and see things further away. The best way to test out what we could do was a footrace and a bit of punching. By the time we were done, the backyard was full of holes. In short, we were some manner of superhuman, but Benitsubasa could still easily beat us in a fistfight, or so she boasted.

"The two of you are noodles! I could beat you with my hands tied behind my back!"

I'm ashamed to say Hans and I took her up on that offer. With nothing but our amplified bodies, we tried to beat her. Even with just her legs, she easily dodged our blows and smacked us up and down like training dummies.

During all of that, I stumbled upon the weird visions I sometimes had. It was a form of precognition, and Benitsubasa was more than happy to help me test the ability. She'd lob small stones at me while I kept my eyes closed. Sometimes I'd see two possible outcomes and dodge the wrong way, but If I focus hard enough, only a single path would appear. This was probably the hardest power to really use, but it was also one of the most indispensable ones.

Finally, the last ability I could use was one I discovered by chance. Hans had summoned that weird avatar of his and was ordering it around. It did as he asked, for the most part, but there was a sort of annoyance in its face. Each time Hans summoned it, the avatar would take on a different face, yet it was always male.

While he was working on that, I shut my eyes and tried to read my surroundings. It was then that I felt it. There was a rushing sensation coming off Hans, so I reached out and grabbed it.

My eyes immediately sna[ped open and the world slowed to a crawl. I raised my hand, only to watch as it sluggishly moved forward in slow motion. It took a good second or two to fully close my fingers into a fist. Was... was this one of Hans's powers? He'd said he could do something like it.

I let go of the strange sensation, feeling as it snapped back to Hans. Try as I might, I couldn't use the power when I wanted. I had to take it from Hans. Was this yet another power?

Whatever the case, the day quickly turned to night. The three of us went inside and ate what little pizza remained, and soon, we moved to our rooms. I had expected Benitsubasa to take the one next to me, and she had at first. About thirty minutes later, she snuck into my room and crawled into my bed.

...

Oh boy.

I had not expected that.