[Nova/Chisaki] - We're Cursed

[taking_names]

Who: Nova and Chisaki
When: Saturday, week 39
Where: Nova's house, then Mianeh
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: References to sex and horrifying injuries (not related)




One morning, Chisaki decided Nova needed to learn to drive.

She wished she could claim this was a long-held scheme, a natural conclusion to each, but she really just had the idea fifteen minutes ago. It sounded good after she thought about it for a little while, though, and thus at breakfast that same morning, she decided it was time to bring it up. She spun her fork between her fingers, then stabbed down into a piece of raw rabbit meat that she had for breakfast.

She learned to not splatter fresh blood on Nova's food by now, so the spread of the blood onto the table was limited.

"Well," she said abruptly, "it's decided. You have to learn to drive a car." She had not previously been talking about this, in fact, and it was completely out of the blue and at odds with whatever he was talking about. "We're gonna have to go steal one, though, because cars are expensive."

If Chisaki was expecting the mixture of confusion and mild terror that her sudden, dangerous ideas usually generated in Nova, she expected wrong!

Instead, he looked surprised for a moment, then lit up with pure enthusiasm, as if he had been waiting for her to say exactly this.

"I should, shouldn't I? I've been wanting to since I knew about cars!"

Of course, his immediate, unquestioning interest in this plan meant he wasn't asking her why she had decided he should learn to drive, which might have been a little off-putting. He was simply delighted that she'd guessed(?) that he wanted to. They were just that in synch, maybe?! This was as close as he came to guessing at her motives.

"Good! A car's important for a relationship," Chisaki said. She nodded, knowingly, and then popped a piece of raw rabbit meat in her mouth like it was a tasty little snack. She wiped her lips on the back of her sleeve, smearing a little blood on them.

"We basically haven't really been dating until we've fucked in the backseat of a convertible we drove to somewhere," she said. "And I'm feeling kinda lazy today so I think I'm gonna make you learn to drive and drive us instead."

It made sense to her.

Well, that quickly went down a road he wasn't expecting.

His own breakfast was forgotten for the moment as he stared at her skeptically.

"We haven't?! ...Why not? What's a convertible?"

He hadn't seen any earth tradition like that in any of the dramas he had watched on his tablet!
"It's a car where the top goes down," she said. "So you can look awesome without getting wet when it rains or whatever. Having sex in the back of one is basically the single most important thing you can do, and means more than marriage, the birth of your first child, a great steak sandwich, and your fiftieth wedding anniversary."

Nova grew steadily more intimidated by her speech as she carried on, leaning further and further away from her in his chair. Bigger than marriage? Bigger than children? That couldn't be true! She was just... being Chisaki, though, wasn't she?

Important to call her bluff, then, for a number of reasons.

He broke out of the cowering pose he'd adopted, and resumed went back to eating his eggs, now with a flippant and casual air.

"In that case, we can't possibly do it so soon."

"What!?" Chisaki whined. "No, no, that's not fair! You can't turn it around on me like that!"

"I can, and I am! Why would you want to put the very highest point of our relationship right upfront in the first couple of weeks?" He took a bite of eggs, still quite calm and dismissive. "That's pessimistic, and furthermore, it would mean the rest is just downhill!"

Chisaki jabbed her fork at him; a few globs of blood from the piece of raw rabbit meat on it flew off in his direction. "That so doesn't count! You're twisting my words! It's not that serious, I'm just doing that thing where I make up bullshit and take it super seriously but it's not and I'm just trying to get you to do things with it! You're supposed to play along!"

Nova's eye followed the glob of blood as it splatted onto his plate, but he shrugged it off.

"But I am playing along," he said, with a self-satisfied smile. "Don't get mad at me just because you're trapped in the web of your own lies."

Chisaki folded her arms and 'hmphed.' Then she looked to the side and back at him, finally sighing. Maybe if she admitted defeat, she reasoned, she could get what she wanted in the long-run. It still felt like cowardice, though.

"Fine," she said, "I guess I'll be boring and say we should just spend the day going to absurd ends to fulfill one of my weird sexual fantasies on a lark. Happy, now?"

"I really have wanted to learn to drive since I learned about cars, so I don't mind stealing a car at all, provided it doesn't get really dangerous." He finished off the eggs, and tapped his fork against the plate thoughtfully, before setting it down and turning to her.

"I did believe you at first. Maybe you're getting better at lies. Or I'm really gullible..."

"Stealing a car safely is easy," Chisaki said. "At least, I think so. I've never stolen a car before, but there's a first time for everything."

She nodded at that, then she bit off her piece of rabbit meat. She thought about what he said for a moment, while she dragged her finger along the grain of the wood in the table. She stopped when she realized that she could feel it too well; sometimes, her heightened senses as a molavvas still surprised her, and the reminder of what she was still caused her mood to sour. It did briefly, with only a hint of that visible in her red eyes, as they looked down.

"I guess I've had a little practice," she said. "And I wasn't playing fair. Shit about Earth, you know? It's easier to lie."

Or things about how her head worked. It was still a bit of a mess.

"You wanna go steal that car? We should go to Mianeh for that."

He gave a little shrug, acknowledging that could well be part of the reason. Being lied to about Earth had really bothered him, once! But it didn't seem like such a big deal when it was Chisaki.

Especially with such an interesting little adventure to undertake! His fear of being caught in another unexpected attack still hadn't completely receded, but with the distraction, they'd probably be halfway there by the time he remembered it, at least.

"Yes, let's do this!"

And they went to do it.

After they got to Mianeh, Chisaki led them into one of the parts that was far more New York than it was Mianeh. She could still find cars on the streets; alchemists had made a pretty penny making rechargeable cores that turned them into constructs. She stopped in front of one, parked on the street, and she passed up six or seven already. She offered varying verdicts about why they wouldn't suffice: one was too red, one wasn't red enough, one looked too pretentious, one had spinners, and one was, to quote, "too salty."

She stopped in front of a dark red convertible, where the top had been left down, and then nodded. She flipped over the side and landed in the driver's seat, when she promptly began to play with it. A few people down the street -- they were in front of a busy shopping district -- stopped and stared, while she began overtly hotwiring a car.

"Hey," she said calmly to Nova, "you may want to hop in. I think the cops might shoot at us when they get here."

Nova climbed over the passenger's side door and pulled himself into the vehicle, giving her a Look.

"You said it would be safe!" he complained. He started looking around nervously to see if anyone was after them already, but then turned back to see what Chisaki was up to.

What was she doing, anyway? He knew nothing about car keys or how you got one started, and this looked too complicated to be normal.

"It's mostly safe! It's--"

The car started. The engine turned over with a roar and Chisaki looked up at him, surprised, and then she nodded with a very serious look on her face. "Okay! Buckle up--" She pointed at her seatbelt as she said it, clicking it in place. "--since I'm gonna take off and get us somewhere quieter before I give you the wheel. And, uh, hold on because I'm gonna go kinda fast and shit."

She went more than "kinda" fast. As soon as Nova buckled his seatbelt, she floored it; the car peeled out with a screech, then blitzed off down the street, away from the handful of people staring at how she got the car started and made off with it. She turned sharply at a corner, the gee forces making her sway to the side, before she looked at Nova and grinned.

"Holy shit!" she declared. "I stole a car! I can't believe this! This is totally awesome! I should have done this years ago!"

Buckle up? -- mysterious instructions. Seatbelts didn't feature prominently in earth movies, nor had he employed one during his brief ride with his player. He looked around for what he was supposed to buckle, finding the belts near his shoulder and waist. Ah! Like some of the amusement park rides. That made sense, then!

"It won't reach-- oh, nevermind, it stretched!" He fumbled the belts together, clicking them into place just a moment before Chisaki floored it, the acceleration pressing him back into his seat.

"Wow!"

Actually, at this speed, it really was like an amusement park ride.

"They're handy that way," Chisaki said.

She drove awhile, finding an acceptable New York radio station that played some classic rock until they came to a place that she judged safe and acceptable. It was on the outskirts of Mianeh, where one of the Zenderean paved roads led off into the country side. She stopped the car on the side, though she left it running. It seemed better that way, she reasoned; she didn't want to waste time with him having to start it.

She looked at him and nodded, then she opened her door. "Okay," she said, "let's switch places. I'll walk you through this thing."

She undid her seatbelt, then walked around the front of the car, to the passenger side. She took a deep breath. She hadn't considered how to teach him to drive. It couldn't be that hard, right? People just sort of learned to drive by osmosis.

It took a while for Nova to become fully convinced that she wasn't going to crash into something and kill them, and that no one was tailing them ready to shoot them in their conspicuously unprotected seats. Once those fears had subsided, he relaxed a bit, starting to enjoy the windswept ride and the loud earth music. No wonder Chisaki had wanted to do this!

Eventually, it came to an end and she pulled over, ready for them to switch. All right! He wanted to do this! Even if it did seem a little dangerous... but driving cars was like the most iconic difference between earther and Zenderean life, so he'd been curious about what it was like since he started to investigate the other world in the first place!

He traded seats with her, re-buckling the new seatbelt, and examining the controls.

"All right, you steer with this," he tapped the wheel, "But how do you make it move?"

"With that pedal," Chisaki said. "The one next to it makes it stop. You want to put pressure on the one to make it go gently--oh, and, uh, move the stick out of park."

She tapped the drive stick with her hand, then she looked back at Nova. She pointed forward. "So basically, don't hit the pedal that makes it go too hard," she said, "and then make it slow down with the one next to it. Nice and slow like, you know? It's super easy."

She paused.

"Oh, and make little adjustments with the steering wheel so we don't just go off the road or somethhing."

He looked down at the stick and back up at Chisaki.

Move the stick out of park. Move the stick out of park....

...Was that a riddle? It was covered in numbers....

Oh, Chisaki remembered, she sucked at teaching people things.

She sighed, pointed at the display where the numbers were, and nodded. "Move it to the one," she said. "We'll stick in first gear for now and then we'll make you go faster in a little bit. So do that, then really gently hit the gas, okay?"

It took some trial and error before he managed to get them underway, cruising along in first gear. Not really familiar with how the movements of the steering wheel corresponded with the movements of the car, he wound up veering gently out of the lane, then hastily overcorrecting and nearly putting them in the ditch on the side of the road.

Then, drifting back in the other direction again...

"What's the matter with this thing!"

"I don't know if it's you or the car!" Chisaki exclaimed in a near panic. They were swerving like a drunk driver an she did not know why. Moreover, she did not know how to tell Nova to not swerve. She realized, while doing it, that she had no idea how to teach someone to drive.

"Next time we steal a car, I'm telling that asshole to leave a maintenance history!" she said. "This is ridiculous! It could be the steering column or the gear shaft or--oh, do it like this."

Which is when she grabbed the wheel and gave it a good yank, without any further warning, to help them keep in their lane. For a given value of helping, keeping them in their lane, and not shooting screaming off the road.

"Wait, but I want to do it!" He pressed back against the back of the seat, trying to give her room to do what she was doing, but also glaring at the back of her head in annoyance. Meanwhile, their speed was doing weird things while she blocked his view.

"I can't even see what you're doing different!"

"I don't know how to explain!" Chisaki yelped. "It's just sort of a thing you learn to do, I think my dad just kinda handed me the keys and said 'here you go, sport,' and it seemed like he was awesome at the time but now that we're in this situation, I think maybe it was kinda more like reckless child endangerment?"

She pulled back without warning, though, because he was right. He needed to drive on his own, which meant that he had to take the wheel. It was probably a good thought, but the downside was that she abruptly took her hands off the wheel and leaned back in her chair.

Which meant, for a moment, no one had their hands on the steering wheel.

Well if Chisaki could learn to do it as a child (he was picturing an eight year old) he could CERTAINLY do it! Chisaki just needed to back off and let him....

Ah, that's just what she had done. And the view of the road was at last revealed!

And they were accelerating off of it.

He grabbed the wheel and tried wrenching it the other way, causing a squeal of tires and a flash of motion.

WELL THERE WAS PROBABLY TIME TO LUCK BEND?!

"NOVA, NOVA!" Chisaki screamed. "Other way, other way! We're going to--"

She stopped managing to form words and just screamed incoherently. The car went off the side of the road, and then up a dirt bank on the side, which acted like a ramp. The car's momentum launched it from the paved Earth road into the decidedly Zenderean forest; it flew into the air, through some smaller branches, and sent leaves and twigs flying out, before it went ramming towards one of the gigantic Zenderean redwoods that stood not so far from Mianeh. They had to be, Chisaki thought through the wave of panic, be a good twenty or thirty feet in the air.

Luck bending worked in funny ways.

In this case, it sent the car flying straight at a huge branch poking out. It smashed through the windshield, shot between the, and out the back window. The car sagged down, the ceiling slamming into the branch. The car dangled off the branch like a vastly oversized Christmas ornament. Glass shards littered the inside of the cabin.

Chisaki exhaled a deep breath. Then she looked out the window, at the ground thirty feet below. Then she started screaming.

Luck bending did work in funny ways, and the result was more like a theme park ride than Nova had ever imagined or bargained for. And he hadn't cared much for theme park rides even when they kept safely to their tracks.

The car had stopped, but Nova was still cowering in his seat, his arms up to protect his head from the spray of glass, and his eyes squeezed shut.

Was it safe? Were they all right? Why had they gone up, but not crashed back down?

....Why were they... swaying?

And Chisaki was back to screaming, that couldn't be good, no it could not.

"Do...I want to look?"

Chisaki took a moment to stop screaming. Her neck hurt a lot, she realized; she probably ha some whiplash. She took a few deep breaths, then she wiped at her forehead. Some blood came off on her hand. She turned an looked at Nova, underneath the branch that ran between them.

"Probably not," she said, "but we need a clever way to not, um, die, so you may not get any choice."

He opened one eye, then the other, gaping at the branch before he even saw Chisaki.

That did explain everything, but not in a way he cared for.

"We're in a tree, aren't we?"

"Hanging from it, to be precise," she said. "Don't panic."

She turned to look at him full on. A piece of glass was embedded six inches into her neck and was bleeding profusely. She appeared to not notice it was there -- even though she rolled her neck, like it was sore -- and she smiled. It was an effort to be reassuring, but with the jagged glass blade poking out of her flesh, it lost the effect she was going for.

"We'll be just fine."

When he saw it, he blanched, and froze.

"Ch-chasa....chakoosi.... chitaski...."

He pointed at it in horror while failing to say her name in various ways. HE HAD DONE RESEARCH AND MOLAVVAS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO LIVE THROUGH ALMOST ANYTHING BUT THAT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE OKAY.

"What?" Chisaki asked, before she glanced to the side of her peripheral vision. She saw the piece of glass sticking out of her neck from the corner of her eyes. They shot wide open. She reached a hand up and poked at it. It was really in there, she realized, and she had a case of something much worse than whiplash. Her finger poked it with a dreadful curiosity, moving it downward.

It sprung back and forth with an audible twong sound.

He made a 'no, don't' noise, wincing on her behalf as she moved it and made it spring in place.

His panic did begin to subside as she continued to sit there, seemingly still keeping her strength despite the fresh gush of blood that maneuver had triggered.

"...Are you dying?" he asked her anyway, nervously, like she could provide an accurate, objective perspective on the fact.

"Nope, but blood loss sucks," Chisaki said. "We should get out of the hanging death trap before I pass out or start coughing blood up everywhere or something like that. I think the car is gonna--"

The car creaked loudly.

"Defintely gonna fall. Yep."

That was a good point. He was definitely not equipped to deal with an unconscious Chisaki in a car dangling from a branch of a giant tree. She was also going to need to eat soon, wasn't she?

Well, if they lived long enough to worry about that.

"We can do it. We're both coordinated, right? And I almost definitely haven't acquired a fear of heights in the past week."

He leaned out of the driver's side window, and felt the car's weight shift as he did it. His heart leaped into his throat, and he pulled himself back, tensing.

"I might have acquired a fear of heights in the past week."

"I think the car is gonna fall before we have time to have a touching conversation about how you can overcome your fears," Chisaki said. The world was starting to swim because of the blood loss. She shook her head, but it did not clear her vision or her mind in the slightest. She took a deep breath. "The car's like a see-saw. So we need to jump out at the same time so we don't, uh, tilt it to the side."

Which would be very bad, she reasoned, even if she wasn't sure why.

"So," she said, as she unlocked the car door, and took a deep breath. A sudden fear of heights, huh. It felt contagious. "On three?"

Well, he wasn't ready, but there wasn't exactly time to argue.

On her count, he scrambled out the shattered driver's side window, using the window's ledge as a stepping stool and clinging precariously to the upper side of the opening -- leftover glass bits and all -- as the car gave a lurch. Before it had time to shift further, he pulled himself up onto roof completely, and ran for the branch. He made it just around the time the branch was giving way. A rogue skill-enhanced leap was sufficient to help him catch another, and he was dangling from it, scratched and scraped but otherwise no worse for wear, when it occurred to him that he had no idea what had become of Chisaki.

"Chaskatchi?!"

"My name," she called back up, "is not Chaskatchi."

Chisaki had jumped down to the ground below, caught herself with a roll, and came up kneeling. She took a few deep breaths, and she looked up into the tree to see him doing a quick jump to get to safety. She looked up at him and flashed a smile, before she stood up and looked at him thoughtfully. The jagged glass in her neck ached sharply, so she grabbed it and pulled it out. The blood increased for a moment, but she quickly grabbed a healing potion from her belt and drank it.

She would need to eat later, to let the heightened healing take effect without driving her to bloodlust. She felt her stomach rumble and the hunger, which never went away, change from a background whisper to something she couldn't ignore.

Then the car crashed down, the tree limb ripping through the convertible top, and it smashed into the ground with a burst of metal and glass. One tire and wheel ripped free and bounced past her. She looked at it with a dull, flat stare.

Nova made his way down to a respectable distance above the ground by swinging from higher branches to lower ones -- a task that seemed like it would probably be impossible until he tried it and found it rather easy. When he was confident he was low enough not to break anything, he let go, hitting the ground in a crouch.

Chisaki looked... bloody, but the glass was out of her neck and she hadn't collapsed, so she was hopefully on the mend. He stood up and went over to her and gathered her up in a hug.

"I didn't mean to almost kill you again," he told her, feeling a pang of that awful guilt stuff springing up out of nowhere.

She looked surprised at that; at the hug, at the sudden guilt. She returned the hug like she wasn't sure what to do with it and her brain took a moment to catch up with the moment that was happening. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and chest and she hugged him back. She wobbled when he did, and then she smiled. It was warm; she reached her fingers up and put them on his cheek.

"It's okay," she said, quietly. "See? I'm tough. No stupid car crash is gonna get me killed. This'll be a crazy story we can tell people, some day. About the time we shot a car into a tree branch." She paused, then she let out a ragged breath. "You okay, Nova?"

It did sound like a funny story, but he felt all knotted up inside about it! This was stupid and pointless and he hated it. Chisaki even seemed to feel bad for him because he was making faces or something, meaning that if he wasn't careful, some sort of infinite guilt chain might be formed (he assumed it worked like that).

"I'm all right, I think I'm having that stupid emotion that makes you feel bad when you hurt other people."

"You're feeling guilty?" Chisaki asked, to say it for her sake rather than confirm it, and then she frowned. She shook her head, then she leaned her head forward and tucked it underneath his chin. Her arms tightened around his shoulders, slightly; she was leaking some blood on him. It wouldn't be the first time.

"It wasn't your fault," she said. "Sometimes things go crazy. You tried to keep us alive. And I'm not gonna get killed, okay? Even if I do, we can..."

She closed her mouth, then, and did not finish that statement. Her eyes turned down at the ground instead. They both knew what happened if she died: there was no resurrection, there was no bringing her back, there was just an ending that would be abrupt and final. Her lips tightened and she lowered her eyelids; she felt a stab of guilt in her stomach for having brought it up thoughtlessly.

"Cry about it from inside and outside the Dark?" he finished for her, giving her an incredulous staredown. It wasn't her fault she couldn't be revived (in fact, it was more like his), but he was content to act annoyed with her for the moment because it was more comfortable than attacking himself.

But frowning accusingly at her for nothing soon gave way to wondering just how they were supposed to avoid deadly danger, when it kept finding them everywhere they went, even on harmless car theft dates!

He sighed, irritation fully dissolving into gloom.


"Maybe I shouldn't mess around with luck, I think I was designed to have bad luck anyway..."

Chisaki looked up at him, sharply, at the remark. Then she looked away, quickly; there was a hurt look on his face, because it was true and because she didn't want to think about it, and she shook her head. She didn't want him to see that it stung. The gloom was easier to deal with, though, and she hugged him tighter without actually looking up at him.

"It doesn't matter," she said, quietly. Her voice wavered, still stung from the previous exchange, and she tried to keep that it upset her out of her voice. It only half worked. "I don't think it works that way, where she can make you to have bad luck."

"In the past month, I've been chased around by assassins, visited a city on the day it happened to get sacked, fallen off a roof, and shot a car into a tree!" He pointed at the tree for good measure.

"All without even a butterfly in sight!" He folded his arms. "I think it is possible to have naturally bad luck, and I'm cursed. I regret to inform you that that makes you cursed by association."

Chisaki looked at the tree, with all of the damaged bark, and she frowns down at the ground again. He didn't notice that the remark hurt, she realized, and that brought it back. She let a sigh out and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the hurt feeling mixed with that gnawing sense of hunger at the back of her mind. "It's not that bad," she said. "You've had some lucky streaks too. Bad luck's just more spectacular."

Cursed by association, she thought. She reached her hand up and rubbed between her eyes, keeping them closed, and sighed again.

"Things just happen, sometimes, okay? It doesn't have anything to do with luck," she said. She opened her eyes back up and looked at him. She tried to ignore the mix of emotions and hunger in the back of her head and smiled at him. It still felt forced. "Don't beat yourself up about it."

"I'm not beating myself up! That's not a thing I do!" he protested.

But then, he didn't even know what he was doing. Lashing out pointlessly? What did he expect to change by grousing about his 'cursed fate?' It was maybe supposed to be funny so it wasn't sad, but Chisaki didn't seem amused. She seemed unusually brittle, in fact, and that made him uneasy, because he wasn't used to seeing her like that. It still didn't quite occur to him that he had caused it, or that he should feel bad about it. As far as he was concerned, he felt bad enough just worrying about the future.

Disasters did seem to follow him. Or both of them. And luck bending hurt often enough that it couldn't be considered much of a help...

"Can we go back and pretend I said another thing about being happy with the time we've had, or whatever it was? That seemed wiser and more mature."

Chisaki's eyebrow twitched, slightly, at the question.

But as it happened, it was the right wrong thing to say. She had gotten accustomed to the fact he did not precisely apologize by now. If it was the sort of thing that would make her really angry, it would have happened by now. It reminded her that he tried, in his own weird (and sometimes psychotic) way. She looked at him, her expression sour, and then it turned into a smile that was less brittle and a little more real.

But a small voice whispered in the back of her head: she was cursed and, sooner or later, being happy with the time they had wouldn't save things.

She slid her arms around his neck again, leaned up on her toes, and kissed him on the lips. "Sure," she said, "I'm fine with pretending you're mature if you'll pretend that I'm a good teacher." She looked at the wrecked car. "And that we had sex in the back seat and didn't turn it into some kind of terrible car pancake."