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Where is it… Cecilia always keeps it in the same place, and she knows she hasn’t run out. So if it’s not here, then…
Dammit. It’s probably her doing, isn’t it?
Cecilia lets out a huffy sigh, stands, and heads to her room.
Well, their room, now.
“Red. Did you do something with my tea?”
In Cecilia Immergreen’s room sits Cecilia Immerred, reading some BL manga she likely borrowed from Gigi. This girl has been getting on Cecilia’s nerves since the first body-stealing incident. Even after trapping her in a jar and figuring things were settled, Elizabeth eventually found out and told her that keeping Immerred’s soul trapped in a jar forever was “inhumane”, asking her to find another solution.
Should have thrown the jar into a ditch, honestly.
“And what reason would I have to touch your tea, Green?”
The other automaton doesn’t even look up from her reading; clearly she’s not surprised to hear Cecilia’s question, which just makes Cecilia assume even more that she did something.
“I wonder. You hid it, didn’t you?”
“Oh, did I?”
“Red, we talked about you touching my stuff before.”
“Really quite shameless to be saying all of that when you hid my coffee yesterday, don’t you think?”
“That’s… That’s different.” It really isn’t, and Cecilia knows that. “I also told you no coffee in my room. I don’t have that many rules, Red.”
“Hmm.”
…Nothing, huh?
“I should hide your hands next time,” Cecilia grumbles, leaving the room to go seek out her lost tea. “Why’d I even build her that body…”
Why, indeed. Really, the body she’d given to Immerred was originally intended as a backup body in case something happened to her current body that she couldn’t repair easily. She was reluctant to just give it away when it was finally nearly complete, but…
Well. What’s done is done. All that really wouldn’t be a big deal if Immerred had just gotten out of Cecilia’s hair after gaining independence, but no. Elizabeth’s next big idea was to offer Immerred a spot in Justice– in their team. How are they meant to fight for justice when the newest member is clearly evil? Unbelievable.
“Hm? Liz and Raora are out?”
“Yep! Said training was just gonna be us and Redcilia today since they’ve got stuff to take care of,” Gigi tells her later on in the day, when she’s finally able to brew her tea… after she found it in the freezer, of all places.
Great, the two people most likely to get on her nerves. Although if Cecilia’s honest, Gigi does it in an endearing way… or maybe she just has a soft spot for the gremlin.
“Hmm. Maybe we should do some sparring today, then?” Cecilia suggests.
“Oh? Somethin’ tells me you’re in the mood to beat someone up, Dear Cece.”
“Hmmm, I wonder.”
Gigi laughs at her, but she agrees to it. The two spend some time chatting before the time for training comes around, yapping at each other about nothing in particular. Pushing each other around a little. The usual song and dance with Cecilia and Gigi, complete with a little banter about giving each other a pounding during the later spar.
It’s almost enough to make Cecilia forget there’s a third member they’re supposed to be helping to train, but the member in question assures that won’t happen when she arrives at the HQ’s living area and mutters something about interrupting the two of them flirting.
“Sorry, you keep doing whatever it is you’re doing and I’ll come back later…”
Cecilia rolls her eyes, but Gigi seems unaffected, laughing and hopping over to Immerred’s side to stop her from leaving. “Hey, we can flirt later! You can’t get out of training that easy, Red Ce.”
…Cecilia had thought Redcilia was bad, but Red Ce is even worse.
“Red Ce?” Immerred furrows her brow, indicating that she’s not a fan of that nickname either. She also shoots a glance over to Cecilia for some reason, who of course scoffs and ignores her, looking away from the two of them and at… ah, yes, Gigi’s phone, with some gacha game she’d left open. That’s clearly much more interesting than those two right now. “I don’t think I like that one.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll think of something else then!”
“Just Red is fine… Anyways, aren’t Bloodflame and Panthera not here right now? I sort of figured you might skip training with no one to make you do it.”
“Eh!? What kind of hooligans d’you take us for?” Even though she’s no longer watching, Cecilia can hear the mock surprise in Gigi’s voice, and she can’t help but chuckle a bit at it, quietly. She also hears a thunk and realizes Gigi probably just playfully punched Immerred. “Ow. Geez, you’re just as hard as Cece!”
“Can’t imagine why that might be,” Immerred replies, slight amusement in her tone. “But okay. If we’re training today, I’ll participate.”
“Good! We were thinking we’d go outside and do some sparring!”
“Sparring… Are we going to take turns?”
Right, there are only three of them. Still without looking back at the two, Cecilia suggests, “Yes, well. I was thinking we start by sparring each other, Red; you and me. I’d like to see if you’ve been improving.”
“Is that so? I’m still not very confident, though,” Immerred responds, although she sounds more uninterested than anything. “I think it would be better if you and Gigi could show me how it’s done first.”
Cecilia finally turns her head, side-eyeing the other automaton. Is she disagreeing with Cecilia just for the sake of it, or what? Honestly . Immerred’s expression is about as deadpan and unreadable as usual, too…
“Hmm. I don’t really care one way or the other,” Gigi says with a shrug. “How about we do rock-paper-scissors? The two who lose spar first.”
“I guess that’s fine with me,” Immerred says, not leaving much room for Cecilia to interject. Well, she could, but it would just look like she’s the one disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing at that point.
“...Sure.”
“Okay cool! C’mere then, Cece, let’s rock, paper…”
…
“Huh.”
As it turns out, Cecilia won over the both of them by picking rock while they’d both picked scissors. So… Immerred and Gigi would be the first to go against each other.
She’s not sure how she feels about that.
“My scissoring strat failed me! I should never have left the fisting to Cece!”
“You’re really so vulgar, Gigi. Oh well. I guess that’s settled, then,” Immerred says.
“True. Guess I’ll just have to win back my crown by fisting you really good in our sparring match!”
…Yeah, Cecilia isn’t the biggest fan of this outcome.
Regardless, they head outside and make their preparations for training. It’s a nice day outside, if nothing else. Not too warm; only a tad chilly, and the sky is clear.
“Try not to lose too quickly, Red,” Cecilia says as she passes by to go and take her place on the sidelines. “You’ve got to at least put some effort in.”
“...Yeah, yeah.” Perhaps irritated by Cecilia’s blatant provocation, she gives a curt response. Cecilia doesn’t respond back and simply makes her way to her seat. She sits down on the bench to observe– once the two have done a few stretches, they summon their weapons.
Gigi, of course, has her usual gauntlets. Immerred’s weapon of choice turned out to be some kind of sledgehammer– a big contrast from Cecilia’s lance. In her opinion, it’s a rather lacking weapon compared to most of those that Justice use, and Gigi should be able to beat her in a fight easily.
…Indeed, things go about as she expected over the course of the fight. To be fair, Immerred matches up with Gigi particularly badly; Gigi is both significantly faster and has much more strength behind her punches. Not to mention…
Cecilia winces slightly as Immerred loudly crashes into a nearby tree after taking a punch, hard enough for the trunk to break and the tree to fall over. Yeah, this is why they have a setup a fair distance away from the HQ to spar, on the ground with not much around but trees… and stumps from events similar to now. They’ve tried sparring up near the HQ before, and the walls… didn’t appreciate it.
Well… her training did only start recently. Immerred is just inexperienced. In fact, Immerred is still getting used to having a permanent body in the first place. This whole sparring suggestion was admittedly just Cecilia wanting to bully her for being a slightly-annoying roommate.
Maybe it was a little much. Gigi was never really one to hold back well, even in spars with her allies. Cecilia begins to consider calling the match herself, but then Immerred gets up and rolls underneath Gigi’s next attack. Oh, that wasn’t bad. She attempts to get a counterattack in, but clearly, she didn't account for Gigi’s tail which then proceeds to swing and shove her back down to the ground, Gigi kicking herself off of it like a spring to get some distance. Is this a good time to call it…?
…Immerred is still getting back up. Despite what she said earlier, Cecilia thinks she should probably just give up here, given that she’s unlikely to make any further progress right now.
The fight goes on for a little while longer, but as expected, Immerred goes down without getting a single solid hit on Gigi. It’s Gigi that eventually calls it quits when Immerred struggles for a full minute to get back onto her feet only to stumble back down to her knees.
“Phew, you’re not bad for a total beginner, y’know,” Gigi says, giving a lighthearted laugh. “Sure tired me out. I guess Cece made you just as durable as her, huh?”
Cecilia refrains from commenting on this, but she does get up and step over to Immerred’s side. “You should have conceded sooner. You just ended up getting more injured than necessary for no reason.”
“...Shut up,” Immerred mutters, weapon finally dematerializing from her hands as she slumps forward, only for Gigi’s tail to lift her back up.
“Don’t be so hard on her, Cece. But y’know, maybe she has a point, Redcilia? You shouldn’t listen to her at all.”
“And what is that supposed to mean, Gigi?”
Gigi snickers, and Cecilia frowns deeper than she already had been. “Oh, just thinking about how much of a contrarian you are, that’s all. Anyways, I’m totally worn out. Cece, why don’t you take Redcilia inside and check up on her? I’ll fight you later.”
“You can’t just decide tha– Gigi…” And Gigi has already scurried off, but not before practically shoving Immerred onto Cecilia, who has to awkwardly move to catch her. Sigh. What’s with her…?
“Red? Are you still with me? I know you can walk on your own.”
…Immerred is quiet. She’s not fainted or anything, and she’s still half-supporting herself and half-leaning on Cecilia; she’s just choosing not to speak.
“...Fine, whatever, let’s just go inside.”
Like Cecilia, Immerred is an automaton, so no real first aid has to be done to her. Still, she’s quite dirty from the fight, so Cecilia makes her get changed– or, well, mostly changes her herself– before letting her into bed. It mostly just means she took off the other’s dress and replaced it with an easy-to-put-on, oversized t-shirt.
“...I’m fine, you know. You can go back to flirting with Gigi now,” Immerred finally speaks up again for the first time in a while when Cecilia begins checking the state of her body. She won’t need first aid, but this body is still kind of Cecilia’s responsibility if it needs repairs, since she’s the only one currently who knows how to do so.
“We weren’t flirting. And I wouldn’t have to check up on you like this if you didn’t get beaten so badly.”
“I tried…”
“And why didn’t you give up when it was obvious you weren’t getting anywhere?”
Immerred sighs. “Do you have short-term memory loss?”
“...You can't honestly be telling me it’s because of what I said. You’re that easy to provoke?”
“It’s not… ugh. Nevermind, it doesn’t matter…”
Cecilia glances up from her examination of Immerred’s body to look at her face. She seems… frustrated. Which isn’t exactly anything surprising. But Cecilia gets the feeling she’s missing something.
“No, go on.”
“You’re just going to mock me again.”
She can’t help but roll her eyes. “I won’t, okay? So explain.”
There’s still a pause, and Cecilia’s about to just give up when Immerred then says, “I was trying to… uh… do a good job so you would… accept me. I guess that’s the best way to put it; I don’t know what I was thinking, really.”
…
Seriously? What does Immerred care about Cecilia’s acceptance? Is she making fun of Cecilia?
“Well you clearly did a very bad job,” she says bluntly. Immerred just sighs again.
“Yeah, you’re right. Why even bother, huh.”
…Is she actually…?
There’s. A chance that Cecilia has been misunderstanding Immerred for a good amount of time. Or maybe refusing to understand her properly. That’s also possible.
She can’t just say that, though. Not now . What can Cecilia do, then…?
“...Well. Take it or leave it, but if you want some advice: Unless you have to stall in a real fight, there’s no good reason to risk getting hurt more than necessary when you know you’ve lost. That’s more important than trying to impress someone.”
Immerred is quiet for a moment, then gives a nod and small hum of acknowledgement. Cecilia isn’t sure how she took the advice, but it’ll have to do for now. As for the body check…
“Anyways, your body seems fine. You took a real beating, but it’s nothing I have to fix…” Cecilia begins to get up, but she notices something as she does so. “...Wait.”
“Mm?”
“...So much for being just as durable as me. Well, your body is mostly fine. But your key was dented. It’s bent backwards a little bit. Not sure when that happened; Gigi knows not to aim for my key… maybe when you got knocked against the tree or the ground at one point.”
“Oh. That’s bad, right? My key is important…?”
“It’s not going to be difficult to make a replacement, so it’s not… that bad. You’ll have to deal with it being like that until then, though.”
“I mean… Will it still turn right?”
“It looks like it should, but…” Only one way to find out, really. Cecilia leans over and reaches for Immerred’s key, touching it gently. “It doesn’t hurt to touch?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“That’s good.” Cecilia then begins to turn the key. It doesn’t have any unusual resistance… “This doesn’t hurt?”
“No. Feels… nice. Gigi is a little bit rough when she turns it.”
“She’s just like that. You get used to it. Well, alright, it seems like you can live with this just fine until I get a replacement ready. Let me know if you get any headaches or something goes wrong with your motor functions or anything like that in the meantime, though.”
Giving the key one last turn and then stopping, she waits for a response from Immerred, but it doesn’t come. She pulls back, and it looks like the other has… fallen unconscious?
There’s a very brief panic in Cecilia, but– “...She’s breathing.” A sign that she hasn’t shut off completely, but instead just fell asleep. Must have been tired…
Cecilia lets out a sigh of her own, then snorts a bit when she realizes Immerred is leaning on her chest. She moves Immerred to lie properly on the bed and pulls the blanket up.
…
She supposes she can let Immerred off the hook for the tea-hiding thing, just this once.