Long Awaited Reunion

It had been a few days since the first sketches were put up on the Lost Adventurer Network. An all too familiar face would appear there. Jurou, drawn in Kita's distinct style, with her newly found Salamander features. It had instructed anyone having seen the girl to report to Scale Emblem Headquarters.

And that is just where Kita is at the moment. There is a creepy element to the castle, with much of it still looking just the way it was found. Kita is sitting at a simple, round table, papers spread out in front of her. She has her head down, pencil moving across the page. It's an intense sort of look that Jurou would have seen many times before.

Yet, in that intensity, there is a sense of exhaustion. Her head is propped up in one hand. The shadows on her features aren't just from the light. Kita has been working hard for days on little sleep.

Approaching the imposing new headquarters building, Jurou slowed from her jog to catch her breath just outside the door. A piece of paper clutched in her grasp, and wearing her casual town clothes, and then she steps through into the great hall.
The tall redhead makes a beeline for the desk at the centre of the grand open room, where an NPC waited to take questions about the Alliance. "Good day, Crusader. What can I do for you?" he spoke, giving a polite smile and nod to the woman standing in front of him.
"Uh, hi" Jurou replied, she still felt weird talking to a computer like it was a person. the salamander girl's reply carries around the large stonework hall. "I found a note looking for me, and I want to get in contact with the person who wrote it. Do you know which player it was?" Her inner monologue pled for it to be Kita, she'd been told the Ezzo boats had just got back, and she'd been about to put the paper notice in her hand up on the wall when she saw a drawing of herself, in a style that was intimately familiar, and she'd hurried all the way here to find out how she can get in contact with the requestor.

It is easy enough to miss Kita at first. With her hat largely covering the girl's strikingly blue hair from view. Yet, she hesitates every time someone comes in. The familiar voice of the guard always has her pausing, the pencil hesitating over the page. At the voice that follows, her breath catches. It's a voice that she had heard a thousand times over the phone, across the world.

Kita looks up, the name held as a whisper on her lips as her eyes take in the Salamander. It takes only a heartbeat for her to abandon her work and come racing across the hall with the sound of racing footsteps. The guard seems to start saying something, but then looks over his shoulder just as Kita comes into view. Somewhere in the running, her hat has fallen off, blue and white hair streaming back behind her.

In the next instant, Jurou would find arms wrapped around her. Kita was always shorter, so her head ends up buried against the girl's chest, arms around her back. She offers no words of greeting, but the tight grip of her arms speak to just how much being apart for this long has effected her.

At the sound of footsteps, Jurou had glanced over curiously, but she had only a moment to register the cool coloured hair of that person before she opens her arms to catch the charging girl, spinning with her in an embrace to avoid being knocked over by the enthusiasm in that loving attack. Jurou whispers in surprise and relief. "Kita..." and squeezes the girl tightly into her, "I've missed you so much."
There doesn't seem to be a need for many words, just the relief of being together, and Kita being okay, is enough for a while, and Kita can her heart beating rapidly in her chest. Then, when the two of them release the tight grip, Jurou leans down to offer the girl in her arms a soft kiss.

At the sound of her name on Jurou's lips, Kita's fingers lightly grip her back a little tighter. Though the two had been separated before, this is the longest time they had gone without talking since becoming a all those years ago. There is a slight tremble in her arms, a mix of relief and exhaustion.

She doesn't speak right away, but eventually she relaxes her grip a little bit. Tilting her head, she looks up at Jurou, closing her eyes as the girl's warm lips come down onto hers. The well of emotions seems to break, causing a couple of tears to drip down along her cheek. Seeming reluctant to let go right away, Kita ends up just leaning her forehead against Jurou's.

"Missed you, too." The words are a whisper. Guilt is still riding her hard, but she takes a moment to step back, her hands reaching out to make sure and maintain some contact by taking Jurou's fingers in hers. "You're okay?" She asks. It's at that moment that the exhaustion likely becomes all too obvious for Jurou. Kita just looks tired. "I'd been looking for almost a week. I can't believe those stupid drawings actually worked." Raising a hand, Kita uses it to wipe against her cheek.

The kiss feels... incredible, it takes until they seperate for her to remember that it isn't real, that they're together in the game, and outside they're ... actually she has no idea what's happened outside - could they be stuck in her room? It's been too long. She has a slightly surprised expression on her face when they part. "It's so real...?" she says uncertainly, and then reaches up to stroke Kita's cheek, brushing away a tear.
"I'm okay" Jurou reassures her, giving Kita's hand a squeeze and keeping a firm grip, "It's been a difficult few weeks without you, not knowing if something horrible had happened to you and I couldn't get there to help" she frowns guiltily, "I tried - I just didn't know how to get there. And then people were arriving but I couldn't find you, and just today I heard there was a missing person's board so I went to go put up a sign." she rushes through her explaination, clearly upset that she couldn't do anything to help.

There is a soft breath that Kita lets out, not quite a laugh but something almost there. "Yeah." She agrees, sniffing once as she struggles to keep the flood of emotions from completely overwhelming her. Jurou had always been the strong one. No matter how much of a fascade Kita managed to show to other people, she still had that softness inside. "Even if we are trapped in this stupid game, at least it feels like we're still real."

Kita's fingers move against Jurou's hand, tracing the digits in a way that feels all too familiar. She'd always been tactile, and this feels like so many of those afternoons, sitting in her room, stealing touches between study sessions. "Come on let's..." She starts to tug on her hand, knowing that they are likely making a scene in the entrance hall.

She lets Jurou talk as they walk back towards the table that Kita had been sitting at. Kita falls into her usual quiet nature, something that most people other than Jurou never see. She plucks up her witch's hat, dropping it on the table when they arrive.

"You shouldn't be the one appologizing." Kita finally says, guilt in her own features. "I'm the one who invited you here. I'm the one who got you stuk here." Despite the negative emotions that play across her face, she doesn't let go of Jurou's hand. In fact, she seems to look for more contact, anything that would confirm that things aren't falling appart like she feels they might be. Her other hand reaches up to toy with the edges of Jurou's red hair.

"Ezzo was hell." She admits with a soft sound in her voice, "But it isn't your fault."

Jurou follows along, led by their entwined hands, to sit by Kita at the back table, "No, it wasn't your fault at all - how could you have known something like this would happen?" She gives Kita's hand another squeeze of reassurance, and her disapproving look turns to a smile as Kita plays with her hair. "I just ... I should be there for you. You needed me and I couldn't." Her voice trails off, she's not used to feeling powerless, and she'd rather intended to take on a role of Kita's protector in the game, only to stumble at the first step.
"What happened in Ezzo? Is- Is everyone back, is everyone okay? I don't really know what's going on with this- this whole thing." she shakes her head and gestures to the world at large, definitely a bit lost here.

If Kita is known for anything, it is that she has a bit of a stubborn streak. Thus, Jurou's reassurances aren't enough for her to simply let go of her own guilt. "Maybe. But it doesn't change the fact that this did happen, and neither of us would have been stuck here if I had just let us have a normal New Years celebration." Her brows knit slightly in worry. "We could have just watched New Years in Shibuya from the TV. We could have snuck into dad's booze and gotten rightly pissed and laughed ourselves silly at stupid things."

Yes, Kita has been beating herself up about this, and the way that things could have been quite so different had she simply made one different choice. Still, here they are. Yet, she can see that same guilt and powerlessness showing in Jurou's eyes and her instinct is to try to erase that emotion. "You're new to the game, love. It's not like you would have had any idea of how to even /get/ to Ezzo." Kita chews at her lower lip, a pensive gesture she has always had. She used to catch the piercing there sometimes, but now it is just a pink scar, having removed some of the more noticeable ones for Jurou's sake.

"God, I don't even know /how/ to explain what happened." Kita scoots her chair as close as possible to Jurou's, her Imp tail instinctively seeking out contact with the other girl's draconic one. That would be a new sensation. Her fingers keep touching Jurou's arm though, tracing the scales and skin there, as if reassuring herself that she is real. "It was like the whole area was hit by a giant computer glitch. Everything went haywire. There were bugged out monsters that we couldn't even damage." Now Kita is rambling, "And I had no idea where you were. I was so /fucking/ scared." Jurou is the only one she would admit that sort of weakness to.

"Sure, but I wanted to spend time doing this thing you like. And it could have been much worse. You could have been stuck here without me, and I wouldn't have had any idea what was happening." Jurou glances up and meets Kita's eyes, and puts her other hand around Kita's "I'd rather be here with you, than anywhere else without you. Also - you're old enough to buy your own booze now. Which is more than can be said for me. Silly American laws." Jurou gives her a little grin, then she suddenly jumps in her seat and makes a little yelp of surprise, turning to look behind herself.
After a second, she laughs and says "Oh. Tail. Having a tail is so weird. I'm never going to get used to that." Her own tail sways back and forth, seemingly of its own accord.
Turning back to Kita, Jurou says "We're together now. We can protect each other until this whole thing blows over, ne?" She says, "Though I probably need to study, and train, until I know I can be your impenetrable shield."

That is a thought that seems to chill Kita to the bone. It's something that hadn't occured to her in all the time she had been trapped within the game. Distance had been eating at her for over a year now, with Jurou having been halfway across the world. The thought that they could have been separated by this game sparks another jolt of fear. "I... don't even want to think about that." Assuming their real world bodies were out there, how heart-breaking would it be to sit there, holding the lifeless hand of the person you love, never knowing if they'd ever come back.

"No. No no no." Kita shakes her head, pushing that thought from her mind. There is still that glassy quality to her eyes that hasn't quite faded completely. "We leave together or we stay together." Even before the Apocalypse, something had been brewing beneath the surface. Each goodbye had become harder and harder for Kita. Sooner or later, they would have needed to have a hard talk, and that had likely been in the cards before Jurou went back to school. Now, though, all Kita says is a whisper, a plea. "I don't know how many more goodbyes I can take."

So, in that moment, she is overwhelmed by her own emotions. Enough so that she doesn't correct Jurou about the alcohol thing, or even comment about the tail. Instead, she just leans in against her, burying her head against her shoulder. The girl's blue and white hair hangs forward, "Just stay. I don't want to lose you again." That mental image really had gotten to her. Kita's fingers actually tremble against Jurou's arm.

Jurou puts her other arm around her love and holds her close, reassuring her "I'm not going anywhere, Kita-ai. You won't need to say goodbye, because I'll be with you." She plants light kisses on Kita's forehead, and holds her for a while.

There are many reasons why Kita's heart belongs to Jurou, but moments like this are a clear example of one of them. While Kita may act strong in front of others, it is just that - an act. Jurou had always been the strong one. The one who could face anything. So, like a rock in a storm, Kita leans into the warmth of that familiar, safe embrace. The one that has been her peace and her shelter. She lets that wash over her until the worst of the fear subsides.

"I love you." She finally says, though her voice is quiet. "You know that, right?" She has said it thousands of times. Those were the words she would say every time they had to hang up the phone to face their lives, separated on opposite ends of the world.

When Kita lifts her head, her eyes still have that glassy quality. "Come with me?" There is that quiet plea. "I haven't really been sleeping." She admits, and it shows. It's likely part of why she feels so emotionally vulnerable, too. Slowly, Kita rises to her feet, her hand sliding down to take Jurou's. "I think I might be able to, now that you're here."