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It's very difficult to go camping when monsters may break down one's tent at any moment. Literally at any moment. But most of the world is wilderness, so there is a lot of choice for places to camp, and most monsters are only interested in the big cities. Really, going camping truly is a great thing for carving out some peace and quiet for oneself, so long as you don't mind the hell that is nature.
“Do you need help with that, Sam?” Helen, not dressed up as geisha and not bare faced either, but rather floating through the mountains east of Z-City in her pastel goth form, floats over to husband where he stands contemplating cutting up a tent with his sword. Every year it's like this, Atomic Samurai never improves at the skill of putting up tents.
The tent exaggerates itself in his vision, pulsing like a gigantic orange heart made of canvas, taunting him, threatening him with emasculation in front of his family. “Huh? No, thanks.” he says, glancing at her out of blazing red eyes, his hair floating in a preternatural breeze of humongous heat.
A genius idea enters Helen’s head. “Coffee?”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” Kamikaze watches as the young woman moves away, walking with an entirely different gait to the one she uses when she's Kanako. Her offering to bring him coffee distracts him from his enemy for a moment, and also takes her away from the drama. Time, he has a bit more time now before he has to slash up the tent, especially if the children remain preoccupied with Bigfoot or bug chasing or whatever it is they're doing. Their voices enliven the hot and spicy pine woods around him, and sound like they're having fun.
With the help of coffee made by the hand of his beloved wife, and a calm moment, Kamikaze realises that putting up a tent is not the end of the world, and all he needs to do is work steadily from A to B. He, one of the world's greatest heroes, shall not be defeated by a portable shelter.
“Oh, Sam, you're the greatest. You know that, right?” some minutes later Helen leans against and makes much of her husband like he's just fought a god level monster to the death, caressing his chest as a conquering hero home from a ten year war, when all he did was successfully erect a tent, and not without partially transforming into a demon in the process.
“I do know, Hel, cheers.” Since he's quite a bit shorter than his wife, Kamikaze has to stand on tip toe in order to kiss her, full on the lips too. Most heroic marriages do not last, but it's impossible not to have an iron clad relationship when the female party admires her male counterpart as much as Helen admires Kamikaze. To the outside world, and to Kamikaze himself, there appears to be no reason why this should not be the state of things. He is the number three hero after all, and she is a geisha. The gulf between them is vaster than that between a super strong president and an exceptionally stylish fast food worker, a gulf both highly enjoy.
A stream of children break through the undergrowth, stopping dead behind their leader, a boy the spitting image of his father. And I mean the spitting image. “Eww, dad, are you kissing mom again?” he says.
Kamikaze lifts his lips from his wife's briefly. “Yes. Suck it up, buttercup.” He returns to kissing her, but laughter from all parties forces him to desist almost immediately.
That evening, after several monster attacks which Kamikaze effortlessly deals with, a storm threatens, the adults sitting around the fire, studying the strange yellow light and ominous sky with some trepidation.
“You did ask your dad not to be a douche, right? For his grandkid's sake, at least.”
“If I wanted a guaranteed disaster, I would have asked him, sweetheart. I said nothing and pretended he didn't exist. That's how he prefers it when it comes to me.”
“Hmm.” Helen, a multi-layered person the way a citrus twist is layered - a big long spiral of different identities all connected by a single skin - contemplates bringing in the cavalry. Her father-in-law is a massive problem, a huge troll, but she has a solution for that…”I'm just, you know.” she gestures at the bushes.
Kamikaze touches his tongue to his bottom lip, looking just as mischievous as his father. “Need a guard?”
“Nope. I'm good. Cook me a few marshmallows?”
That'll keep him occupied for a while, thinks Helen, as she steps into the undergrowth, and fazes out of visible reality, as well as the universe itself.
Time doesn't exist where gods do, but a couple Earth minutes later, Susanoo, God of Storms, epic sword wielder and demon killer, has someone, or something, knock on the door of his cloudy home, interrupting the storm gathering he was doing.
“What?” he barks, turning away from tying his wild hair into some sort of pony. Of course the instant he does, he looks like the spitting image of his son, but messier, and less polite. And I mean the spitting image. The spirit and image.
The knocking continues until the tempestuous deity is forced to answer his own door. “What-”
At the threshold lurks an Entity clad in diaphanous gauze, its form unrevealed and only hinted at. Humanoid, it nonetheless possesses certain…anomalies. Nothing needs be said by it, it simply stares, a single bright blue eye visible behind layers of wispy wrapping. Somewhere amongst the bandages, a smile slowly carves itself into eldritch flesh.
Licking his lips and gulping, Susanoo goes down on one knee before the Thing.
Back on Earth, the happy couple roast many marshmallows, the sky having returned to a peaceful flaming red.
