Foreigners’ Ship Explosion an Act of Terrorism?
At around 5 P.M. of Day 108, CC 304, a spaceship exploded within the confines of the Great Gate of the business port on the north end of our base ship Fūyo. Kanna Ishidōrō Gendō, 18, and Terra Intercontinental Endeavour, 24, are listed as missing in the incident’s wake. Additionally, two low-pressure environment workers sustained minor injuries, including arm bruising. The incident occurred as a pillar boat was proceeding towards dock when it suddenly disintegrated for reasons which are still unclear. A blast wave did not occur due to the unpressurized environment within the port at that time. Shortly afterwards, a vessel registered to the Jack-of-All-Trades clan departed through the gate without port clearance. The Bureau of Protocol is attempting to determine the present location of this vessel in order to investigate any possible connection to the incident.
—Article from the Day 114 morning edition of the Gendō clan newspaper Tōryūmon [Gateway to Success]
⠀
WE OBJECT to these unfounded allegations.
We at the Trades' Council of Elders offer our sincerest condolences to the missing, the injured, and those who suffered mental distress and property damage from the explosion which occurred within the Gendō clan’s base ship on the evening of Day 108.
The vessel registered to the Jack-of-All-Trades which left port shortly after the incident, the Insolvent, is a harmless shuttlecraft which follows proper procedure in its operational conduct. The cause of the explosion should come to light following a complete investigation, but our Council can guarantee with the full faith and trust of our clan that the Insolvent was not responsible, either directly or indirectly.
In serious matters such as this, we will not tolerate unproven allegations of criminal activity directed towards our people and vessels. We have obtained credible reports indicating that these biased news articles are intended to direct the eyes of our society away from more important matters.
Again, we object to these unwarranted allegations. In addition, we will be conducting a thorough, continuing investigation into the person or persons behind these allegations and the motives behind their accusations.
—Declaration from the official Trades’ Interclan Net Account (ICN)
“Are you an inspector, Pri-san?”
As the Insolvent ascended into an elliptical orbit following its escape from Fūyo, the two—once again rescued along with their control pits—raised their suspicions.
“What’s that?”
“You know, like at a Bow Awow?”
Terra seemed slightly more knowledgeable on the matter.
Diode huffed, turning to ask, “What’s an inspector, Terra-san?”
“I mean, everyone who went to elem—sorry, basically, an inspector is a detective temporarily assigned to the Bow Awow for the purpose of investigating the political affairs of each clan to guarantee the safety of all Circs.” Everyone who went to elementary cruise school is taught that—Terra had swallowed her words before answering. She returned her attention to the VUI. “Is that your real identity, then? And being a helium inhaler was just a cover?”
Pri appeared on projection from the main ship. The dark brown woman with twintails and a bright smile nodded vaguely. “Ahhh, yeah, I suppose you could say doing stuff like picking up you two and your control pits is kinda part of my job.”
“You don’t say...?”
“Of course it’s not, don’t let her sweet-talk you. Her? An inspector? There’s no way she would have a position like that!” Diode said to cut off Terra, who was meekly going along with Pri.
“Wait, what do you mean by that?”
“No matter how you look at it, wasn’t our rescue by a helium extractor just a coincidence? Are you telling me an inspector just happened to be conveniently operating near us in the cloud sea? There’s no way.”
“Ah, now that you mention it...”
“Either that, or she became an inspector after we were rescued, but would an inhaler really be given a position like that so easily? Well, Pri-san, what do you have to say to that?!”
Pri laughed breezily as Diode pointed at her projection to rebut her.
“Ahaha, that’s right! Like you said, there’s no way I could be an inspector. You’re better off believing it if that’s what you think, so how about we forget all about this? Now, if you’ll excuse me!”
“Huh, wait...”
“Hmm? What is it?” Pri was already lifting a hand to cut the transmission but paused to look at Diode with amusement.
Diode got the feeling she just said something stupid and thought a little harder. “You can’t be anything other than an inhaler if we assume you were there by coincidence, but... maybe it wasn’t a coincidence?”
“Oh?”
“You were monitoring us from the start? Yeah, no, that can’t be it. You couldn’t have been watching us leave Idaho... It was the attack shuttle. So, you were monitoring the shuttle Jigō-san was piloting to attack us. From the moment it left Fūyo? That’s why you were in a position to rescue us after we managed to climb back out after our crash?”
“...Kanna-san, no, Diode-san, you think fast,” Pri said simply before falling quiet. She was smiling as always, but that smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“No, wait,” Diode said, pressing her forehead. “Assuming it’s true that you’re an inspector like Terra-san says, you’re someone who would only be assigned to a major incident, right? My getting attacked and Terra coming to my rescue doesn’t rise to that level, so what brings you into this?”
“Die-san, we’re important, aren’t we?!”
“No, not compared to something like the Bow Awow! Right, Pri-san?”
Diode pushed the encroaching Terra back and looked at Pri. Pri smiled and stretched her neck side-to-side before responding.
“Hmm... This time, a lot went smoothly thanks to you two, which is why you’re being brought back with us like this. Well, that’s the short version, anyway.” Still acting cheerful and smiling, Pri looked at someone offscreen before continuing. “Ahaha... but it looks like you’re gonna have to hold tight for a while before you get the long version.”
“...Are you really an inspector?”
“Well, you can trust me on this whenever you want to, but for now, Kanna Ishidōrō Gendō-san and Terra-san, you two will be taken care of like you’re one of the Trades. Er, I should say, you already are being treated like one of us, because otherwise you’d get packed off again. Meanwhile, we’ll try to get the situation under control, and once we manage that you two will be free to go.”
“We’re being imprisoned, then? For how long?” Terra asked, bending forward.
Pri shrugged. “Who knows? Depends on the guys over there. If anything, I’d like to know too. By the way, Diode-san, there’s a lot they’re gonna want to ask you about.”
The two didn’t reply.
“Ahh, no, don’t get the wrong idea,” Pri said with a wave of her hand, smiling wryly. “There’s nothing to be scared of. We understand that fundamentally, you two are victims here—sure, you both did a lot of things; jumping ship without permission, suspicion of bribery—but our division doesn’t handle those cases and we’re not about to start now. You’re our guests. Guests who should try very hard to lay low.”
“That’s fine then, I guess...”
“Ah, right! There’s also no need to worry about expenses during your stay!”
“You’re going to handle that?”
“Nope, because if I did, you wouldn’t have to pay interest!”
“...”
“So, kick back and relax! There’s no rush, you can pay it off at your own pace.”
It might have been a Trades joke, but the two didn’t feel like laughing.
Pri spoke to someone offscreen again, nodded, and then spoke, “I asked this before, but... How about you two come live with my clan?”
“We already gave you our answer. We’re a pair of women flying a pillar boat together, and we’re only going to live somewhere we can do that,” Diode firmly replied.
Pri’s response was unexpected.
“Yeah, you did tell me that. And well, after that I spoke with my superiors... If I told you the winds had changed a little and women could board together, what then?”
For a moment, the two fell silent. They looked at one another, then away for some reason.
“Let us think about it,” Terra replied.
True to its name, the Trades’ base ship Table of Johor was shaped like a round dining table that spun with its legs pointed at their star. As for the meaning of the name “Johor”, Terra couldn’t remember.
She had the feeling that things were being explained to her on the ship on their way over, but she was nearing the limits of exhaustion and couldn’t remember much. Far too many things had happened in the preceding five days, the last twenty-four hours especially—When was the last time I had a proper place to sleep...? It must have been while I was still aboard the Insomnia, so the night before I snuck into the Gendō clan! I ended up leaving so much behind there...
And so—
“Well, like I said, here’s the room. Make sure to get some rest, you two!”
Terra followed Pri’s urging, and the moment she passed the simple twin room with two beds and a little gravity, her emotional thread snapped.
“I’m going to sleep. Sorry.”
“What? But we still have a lot of things we need to disc–”
“Mhm, we do, but I’m for real at my limits.” She wobbled to the shower room door and started to open it, but just before she did, she suddenly turned and asked, “Is it okay if we share a room?”
“...Obviously?”
Hearing that, Terra entered the bathroom feeling relieved from the bottom of her heart.
They had a pile of things to talk through and mull over, but her head felt like it was filled with the ash left over from a fire. The duct dress she had been wearing up until then felt like a suit of armor. Once she finished sluggishly peeling it off, she started pouring hot water over her head.
After she started rinsing, the door behind her suddenly burst open. She could hear the sound of clothing being tossed on the floor outside.
“What?! Wait–”
Terra tried to look behind her, but water and bangs covered her face. She felt the woosh of the door closing, followed by arms hugging her waist and a thin body gently pressing itself against her back.
Her body tensed, and stifling a scream, she called out, “D–Die-san? What’s up?!”
“Nothing’s up.” Terra felt the girl’s breath at the base of her shoulder blades. The arms around her were slightly sticky, but smooth and warm. She was naked. “Nothing’s the matter. Mm...”
“Um, there’s still so much we haven’t—wait–”
“If you really don’t want me here, I’ll leave.”
Terra, who until that moment had been in a frenzy, brought herself to a halt when she heard that. Not because she was thinking of having Diode leave, but because she felt a nervous tension in the arms embracing her in spite of the girl’s brazenness.
Terra took a deep breath and accepted the fact that this day would come eventually. She asked, “Can we get out and talk this over first?”
“If we get out, we’ll have so much else to talk about.”
“Yeah...”
“And once we talk about all of that, we’ll have so much to think about, too.”
So much—Terra didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of matters at hand. She understood how Diode felt.
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s better this way.”
“So this is fine?”
“Yes—I’m... really not against it.”
Her resolve got through. Diode lifted her face and called out Terra’s name as she took her by the hand.
“Ah, I’m sorry for catching you off guard like that–”
“It’s okay, but don’t do that again.”
Terra relaxed her body. Diode followed suit and softly pressed closer.
“Die-san...”
“Mmm, Terra-san...”
Hot water continued to rain on them.
After lightly rinsing the front of her body, she slipped her hand under Diode’s small, delicate armpit and moved her in front, letting the water rinse down the girl’s hair and over her shoulders. Terra wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do in this situation, but that had been something she wanted to do. She felt certain Diode wasn’t complaining as she kept caressing the girl’s body.
Silver hair flowed between her fingers like water as Terra combed. The rising steam was mixed with a faint, herbal scent. What made Diode’s hair so beautiful was one of the great mysteries to Terra. Fascinated, Terra kept combing until she heard Diode nervously speak up.
“Maybe this isn’t just a shower? No way...”
“For the Endeavours, there’s no such thing as just a shower, though?” Terra let a wry smile show. “Honestly, I’m still really not sure what to do, and we didn’t even put that finger thing on either...”
“It’s not something that needs to be there for us to... We can clean ourselves up here.”
“You really know a lot about this stuff... Do you have experience with washing others?”
“...”
“You do, don’t you? Since you’re from another cla–” Terra felt a new, naive pain in her chest. She brought the girl’s dainty hand to the spot. “I don’t have any experience. I’m a woman from the Endeavour clan who doesn’t know a thing. So... Die-san, you’ll have to teach me how you do it.”
Diode’s palm pressed against her. Terra started to feel pulsing in the depths of her chest; the skin all over her body tingled.
“Guh...” Diode gulped. Her face was already sweaty, but her blush visibly deepened. “...I-it’s a very heavy responsibility, huh.”
“It is. It’s also one that’s this big, but do you think you can manage?”
“I’ll do my best!” Diode pulled Terra’s large palm closer with her small hand, and Terra dropped to her knees in the same motion. Their eyes now level, they pressed their lips to one another.
Before then, Terra had seen Diode’s petite frame in various poses. Standing, walking, sleeping, upside-down, running along the eaves overhanging the street, and of course, boldly maneuvering their pillar boat clad in a lovely deck dress. And every time she saw it, Terra got the sense that from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, Diode truly belonged in her body. It was a strange way to describe it, but that was how it felt in comparison to her own self. Terra always felt like her body was much bigger than she was aware of. It would be better if I was shorter, smaller, lighter—that was the feeling she got whenever she became conscious of the parts of herself that felt like excess.
She got the opposite feeling about Diode. The visible lines of her completely nude body were flawless and beautiful, but as far as it went, Terra didn’t seem to feel much more than a sense of admiration, yearning, and regard for its loveliness. In fact, that feeling twisted inside out to become worry, then inverted yet again into fear.
Up until now, she didn’t enjoy being seen or touched by others, to put it mildly. So, it was possible Diode also wouldn’t like being seen or touched by someone as large as she was—and for Terra’s part, maybe she would dislike being touched too, even by someone she liked as much as Diode.
“Um, Terra-san.”
In fact, that fear and worry had been there from the start.
“Yeah?”
“You’re so warm.”
Hot water poured incessantly from the ceiling onto the shower floor. Diode leaned sideways across Terra’s kneeling thighs and stuck out her tongue.
“Even though you’re this big, this tall, so vast, so profound...” She tightly hugged Terra’s nape a few times, then took an arm and began caressing it in both hands; shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist. She alternated between kissing the palm and back of Terra’s hand, then rubbed her cheek against it.
“You’re not too firm at all. You’re soft and smooth, your smell is comforting, and you’re sooo warm...” Diode punctuated her statement by flicking her tongue along Terra’s fingers, tip to valley. Goosebumps rose on Terra’s neck and raced down er arms. Each time Diode started on another finger, she lifted her shoulders closer to Terra’s ample chest. It was almost as if she was trying to flatten her slender torso against Terra, shifting her intensity as she pulled closer and closer.
From Terra’s perspective, she was thrust into a situation where sensations she had never felt before were being massaged in by a heater rod overflowing with affection. The fears and worries she was expecting dissolved away into gasps and beads of sweat, and it left her in a headspace she never could have imagined. A completely different type of fear sprung forth.
“Um... Die... san...”
“Yes?”
“How... do I put it—” Terra squeezed her eyes shut as her shoulders shuddered, just from feeling some part of Diode rub somewhere on her body. “This is weird!”
“Huh?”
“This is weird, this is so weird... Die-san, that's not enough! What is happening...”
“Ah...” Diode relaxed and sighed, planted a firm kiss on Terra's cheek, and whispered in her ear, “Sorry, I didn't mean to tease you, but I got all wrapped up in watching you.”
“That's not—it's not enough so... I—”
“Woah!”
Terra, without really understanding what she was doing and controlling her strength as best she could, squeezed Diode tight again and again, kissed her over and over, and on impulse, let her fingers crawl from mound to cleft and back again. As she pinned Diode to the floor, Terra cradled her head in hand like she was laying a baby to sleep. Casting a huge shadow on the girl, she leaned forward.
“I-I’m gonna go Die-san fishing now, alright?”
Diode, facing upwards, opened her eyes wide. Even so, she gave Terra a wide smile and defenselessly opened her arms wide.
“Fish away... Mm...”
Terra figured out it was the sort of exchange that, for the most part, she could take as much as she gave.
“Ahh...”
Two hours later, Terra wrapped her body and hair in towels and sat on the bed, mentally and physically exhausted. Diode appeared from the shower room, having used the built-in printer for a gorgeous bustier with fine, carefully placed lacework, panties with multiple sets of frills, hose and garterbelts, and long gloves that extended to her elbows. She had even crowned herself in a gothic headdress with a non-veiled style.
“What? WHA...”
“I went on a printing spree. To put it in a fisher’s language... well, if we need deck dresses, we also need bed dresses.”
She twisted her hips right and left, then spun with stretched arms to emphasize her body lines before asking Terra’s opinion. Terra turned red and waved her hands.
“It’s a bit, um, provocative, er, I mean–”
“You don’t like it?”
“It looks great, but it shows so much I could die!”
“Haven’t you seen everything already, though?”
“But we were in the shower then...!”
Diode cut the main lights and approached Terra, lit only by the dim footlight. “You should be fine now that you can’t see me.”
“Auau...” Diode climbed into the only occupied bed, throwing herself on Terra’s mercy. Embarrassed, she asked, “So... you’re doing just fine?”
“Me? Fine?” Diode snuggled closer to Terra under the blanket before asking, “I was worried as hell, and my heart also feels ready to burst, but do I seem fine?”
“You seem a lot more put together than I am...”
“Is there anything that’s making you freak out?”
“Not really, but if I had to say, I guess there is something bothering me.”
“That being?”
“Doing, um... doing that sort of thing with you makes me happy, and it also feels good.”
“If it makes you happy and feels good, then what’s the problem?”
“The problem...? I mean, look... at us.”
“Do you know what I was worried about?”
“...That I’d say I didn’t want to do it, right?”
“No, you telling me you didn’t want to do it wouldn’t have been a big deal. If that was the case, all I had to do was stop.” Diode replied, shaking her head. Her breath hitched for a moment before continuing. “What scared me was the idea you would say something like, ‘what we’re doing is, you know, against common sense after all.’”
“...”
“Do you get me?”
“Yes.” Terra immediately felt like she was about to cry. She hugged Diode’s thin torso tightly. “I’m sorry, but I’d never tell you that.”
Diode, who had been breathing unevenly with anxiety, relaxed and let out all the air that seemed to have collected in her chest. “That’s a relief... I’m glad.”
“Mm.”
Diode snuggled up to her. Terra buried her face in Diode’s hair, taking in deep breaths—it had the same scent as the 15 cushions left behind in the attic of her home back at Idaho.
“Ahh, Die-san, I finally...”
“Mm, um...”
“Die-san.” Just pulling the girl who lay next to her close wasn’t enough. She firmly lifted Diode over her body.
“Uh...”
Diode squirmed in confusion, but Terra let the girl’s weight settle on her chest before sighing in relief.
“I finally caught you.”
“...You caught me plenty of times today, though.”
“It’s a matter of sentiment," Terra said with a smile, cupping Diode’s face in her hands. “I didn’t have the time to savor it.”
“Well, a moment ago, you weren’t taking it slow. You were giving it everything you had.”
“Uh, yeah,” Terra replied, averting her eyes. “Before... that was, you know...”
“And is now any different?”
She couldn’t decide whether to respond to the girl’s faint, flirty smile, to dodge it, or to segue into the mountain of things they had put off for later.
“Is it okay if we leave this for tomorrow? My battery for today is...” Terra said in an admission of defeat. She was already tumbling into the depths of slumber the moment she laid her head back.