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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SteelTrim on 2025-07-02 03:05:49+00:00.
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John awkwardly laid the dragon woman on the mattress she had been sleeping on, stepping back as she immediately curled up like a sleeping cat the second she touched fabric. It was weird, awkward, and he wished he were doing anything else, but it had to be done.
"How long is she going to be like that, you think?" He asked, turning to Yuki as he glanced around. It felt a bit… strange to be in what may as well be the bedroom of another while they were passed out, even if it was just a warehouse he owned. It didn't feel much like a living space, even accounting for the fact that Rin didn't bring much with her.
"Perhaps a few hours at most," Yuki shrugged, unconcerned. "I expected her constitution to be a bit greater, but, in retrospect, her being unused to high-quality reagents was a forgone conclusion." There was… some worry in how the corners of her muzzle dipped into a frown, but he couldn't place why, if it was not about Rin.
Quite the thing to misguess, in any case. John wasn't sure if she reminded him more of someone drunk enough to show up on some trashy "real policing" show or a four-year-old hitting a sugar crash the way most people hit brick walls.
Still, the process answered some questions about Rin and Unbound as a whole. His entire array of devices couldn't capture everything, but he gathered enough to understand the basis of much of what the pair were doing, even if the exact methods eluded him.
"Say, speaking of that, would you mind clarifying some things for me?" he inquired. "I have some theories and some questions after what I saw."
"Of course!" Yuki responded. "Tell me, what does our local genius think happened?"
There was something distinctly uncomfortable with being called a genius, but he pressed on. "You isolated the elements you didn't want to interact with, then you somehow broke down the elements you wanted to interact with. It reminded me of…" How would he say chemistry to someone without the context? If there was a word for it, he didn't know it. He could just say alchemy, but for all he knew, that may have greater implications. "The process of extracting iron from ore, but… Ugh."
Frustration crossed his face as he searched for examples. "It's like fire. With the right prodding, it transforms one thing into new matter composed of the original parts. You manually stirred it up, then added the right things, and used the energy released to have the process drive itself. The pot kept unwanted things out, so nothing interfered." A simplification. It seemed to act like a semi-solid barrier, only letting magical energy above a certain level through, and only when it was concentrated into specific points.
Sometimes, he wished that Yuki could speak English. Other times, he didn't know how he'd feel, seeing another English speaker after all this time. Bah. He had a creeping suspicion that she was somehow boosting the rate at which he was learning the language, anyhow. One day, he'd probably be able to find out a way to communicate all these complicated ideas with her that way.
"From there, Rin drank the mixture and somehow integrated it with herself. The energies around her intensified, but it wasn't quite like they got pointedly stronger. It was more like they became… larger? Her energies stretched out further from her before she pulled them back into herself. While it was hard to read what was going on inside her, I could at least tell that some compound mana was harder for her body to process than others, and the easier to process stuff not only burned up faster, but gave her a bigger boost. I assume that was the stuff related to… what she is or how she was Unbound? Things closest to a dragon with power over storms." He finally stopped, taking deep, puffing breaths.
Yuki waited for him to recover as he started coughing, a dry scratchiness hitting him with full force.
When he was finished blinking the stars out of his vision, he saw the kitsune holding out a cup of water to him, which he accepted with a dip of his head, unwilling to try to voice his thanks.
The cooling drink was soothing, softening what felt like jagged edges in his throat.
"You are close," Yuki admitted, "but paint an incomplete picture." She paused for what he was sure was dramatic effect, softly exhaling as she closed her eyes. "To the average person, their body and soul are not in unity. To an Unbound, they are closer together. To a yokai, they are one. I, and every other yokai, do not operate on the same rules as anything born of the mortal plane."
All at once, dozens of different things clicked, and John gasped.
He could feel them, and he could touch them, but yokai material always acted a bit… weird, not entirely obeying natural laws like how the pieces of Nameless in storage seemed to shed shadow. Did they even exist on an atomic level? What if they were just projections of some immaterial soul into the material world?
Yuki could function despite being poisoned, with much of her leg outright missing, walking as if nothing had happened. Even if it didn't kill her, the sheer biomechanics shouldn't have let her stay upright due to being unable to control anything past the damaged section.
Nameless were much larger than spiders could be in an Earth-like atmosphere. John had always suspected magic directly influenced their air intake somehow, but…
Wait. Did that mean the kappa bit off a part of his soul to—
"I know what you're thinking, and this next part is important. What you saw in Rin and what yokai are composed of has many names. Essence. Core Form. Spirit. It's all the same. The Soul, in a formal sense, is the core of the self. The Spirit is the metaphysical weight bound up in it.”
More things clicked. The way Yuki tore the souls out of Nameless, binding their souls into an orb for her to devour… the way they died was unusual. Normally, they never withered away and solidified, but when Yuki tore their souls out, they did. She must have done the metaphysical equivalent of hollowing them out! The only Essence, Spirit, whatever the hell you want to call it, left was probably what was most tied to their physical form.
If he took that statement about Unbound being closer to that at face value, their unusual resilience, even beyond the Aegis, suddenly made sense.
John couldn't do much besides laugh. "You have no idea how many things this clears up. I have many more questions, but first, I need time to think about how to put them. For now, if you excuse me, I should probably go finish that flying—"
Yuki put a hand on his shoulder as he glanced toward the door. He jolted and tensed, eyes darting over to meet hers, he saw… he wasn't quite sure. Sympathy? Worry?
"I would like to talk to you about something, too," Yuki requested.
After a moment of thought, John acquiesced, dipping his head.
"Would you like to talk about those priests from earlier?" she delicately asked.
He reeled, the phantom heat pulsing against his torso like a strobe. "No!" he stated, perhaps a bit too roughly, and a bit too harshly. "No, sorry," he repeated, more quietly in a way that made him feel small. "Maybe another time."
Her gaze searched his, although not harshly, and he couldn't escape the feeling she was looking at him with pity.
After a moment that stretched far too long, she broke eye contact first. "Very well."
Internally, he slumped with relief.
"However, you are doing far, far too much with too few breaks. You need some time to relax."
Pursing his lips and choosing his words carefully, he took a moment to reply. "I don't think so. We have so much to do all the time."
"Don't think I haven't noticed you entirely losing yourself more and more, John." Yuki tutted like a disappointed parent. "You were practically comatose the whole walk back. You bounced back from the first Nameless incident quicker. You're clearly stressed and suppressing it."
Was he? It couldn't be that bad. "These last few days have been rough, sure, but I just have to power through. It's not that bad. I've even been sleeping fine! Sure, the stuff about you, the Nameless, Rin… It worries me, but I can manage it. If I don't deal with things quickly, it could spiral out of control if something else comes up! What if my flight isn't finished by the time we need it, or if—"
John cut himself short as a slightly annoyed glare manifested on Yuki's face, aimed squarely at him. She took a deep breath, and it was gone again, replaced with pure sympathy.
"John, please, you need to rest. Unless we provoke something, no attack is coming," she soothed. "You'll do everyone no good if you stress yourself into a heart attack."
He winced. "How are you so sure about the attack? They didn't need an announcement for the last one."
"The letter said nine days," she stated. "It's doubtful that the letter was written by an uninvolved third party, so why would they tell their puppets to move clear before then if they planned to wipe us out before then?"
That… was a good point. It still didn't excuse passivity, but at most, they'd probably catch some probing attacks before then. Even when they last attacked, it was only when the town's militia accidentally provided an extra bit of leverage, ...
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