Warming Up

Grieve-tan was being pissy.  But this time made sense; she did just blow the entire tournament.  He'd been watching from the sidelines when she brandished her bokken against Republic High's Kenobi-san.  And Anon liked to think he was skilled.  Not skilled enough to beat Grieve-tan, of course, that's why she soundly whooped his ass and moved onto the finals.  But Kenobi-san was a whole other league of kendo mastery.  The guy could strike like lighting and hit your bokken like a boulder.

If she was allowed to use more than one bokken, she would've won, no doubt.  Confusing her opponents was her greatest strength.  It covered the holes in her defense.  Only one bokken, and Anon could see the gaps.  Smallest possible gaps in the entire world, because Dooku drilled them away to almost nothing.  But even that was enough for Kenobi to push through.

So Grieve-tan lost and she hadn't returned texts and even a small email yet.  Finally Anon loaded up his backpack on a Saturday - early on before the sun rose too high and it started to warm up - with a peace treaty of a liter of DragonJuice and biked down to Grieve-tan's house, down the nearby hill where the traffic didn't clump so thick.  Of course she'd be mad, but he'd told her tons of times that once she talked it out she always felt better.  The trick was getting her to go with it.

"Hey," he said to Elder Magna, who had opened the door for him.  "I come bearing DragonJuice."

"Hi," Elder Magna said.  "Come on in.  You might be the only one Grieve-tan's willing to listen to right now, anyway."

Anon crossed through the spartan living room to enter the kitchen.  "I figured as much."  He popped open the fridge and slid the DragonJuice in the fridge door's side pocket, and pressed down on the ketchup bottle's open lid until it clicked shut.  "She just needs to get it out and she'll be fine."

"I'll never figure out why she'll raise a stink about everything else but she clams up when there's a problem with kendo."  Anon shut the fridge door and Elder Magna escorted him back into the living room and to the stairway directly across from their fat gray TV.  "If you ever find out, let me know."

Anon nodded.  "Wish me luck."  He climbed up the stairs, curling his fingers and sliding his palm up the guard rail.  In the thin hallway at the top, he leaned his shoulder against the wall, rapping his knuckles against the first closed door on the right.

"Go away," came Grieve-tan's reply, with that slight lisp caused by her braces.

"I brought you DragonJuice," Anon said, sing-song.

The door swept open and out peered Grieve-tan's head along with its frazzled blond hair.  Her eyes met Anon's.  "Bring me a glass."

"It's still warm."

"I don't care."

***

Grieve-tan took the bed and Anon took the chair at her desk.  She was wearing her usual weekend outfit of loose tanktop and shorts.  Today the tanktop was green and stuck to her chest, except when the sweeping fan pointed towards her and the top's straps fluttered to the wind.

"So how are you doing?" Anon asked.

"Fine," Grieve-tan said.  "I bet Magna told you to check up on me, but you're wasting your time.  I feel perfectly okay."

"No you don't.  You lost the tournament and you're bottling it up.  Are you trying to save face?"  He swirled his glass of DragonJuice and the fat ice cubes inside clinked against the plastic.

She cleared her throat, her lip hanging, and then took a sip.  "I really don't want to talk about the tournament."

"It'd help."

"NO," she snapped, and pointed at Anon with two right hands.  "I don't NEED your help.  I don't want to talk about it.  Tell me about anything else, but forget the stupid tournament."

Anon sighed.  "All right."

Grieve-tan growled, and leaned her head back so it tapped against the poster behind her, landing right on the crotch of Figrin D'an.  "I hate you sometimes.  Now whenever I get mad I know that I'm getting mad, and I hear you in my head telling me to just let it out and I'll feel better."

"I'm pretty catchy, aren't I?"

"Yeah, you're just a total parasite."

Anon closed his eyes as he took a drink.  "Well, if you don't want to talk about it right now, you don't have to.  But I'm just saying.  It usually works."

Grieve-tan looked towards the half-drawn blinds.  "Right now the only person I'm mad at is myself.  I worked so hard, trained for weeks.  And Kenobi-san walked all over me.  What did I do wrong?"

"Maybe you were tired after all the other matches you fought," Anon said.

"But then you should've been, and Kenobi-san.  I should've been able to keep up with him, but I didn't."

"Does Coach Dooku have any idea what you could've done instead?"

"I don't know.  He...hasn't spoken to me."  Grieve-tan's toes scuffed against the hardwood.  "No one has.  They're just...giving me looks.  They're not saying anything, but I know what they're thinking."

Anon frowned.  "Don't let them get to you."

And then Grieve-tan threw up her hands.  "What do you want me to do, Anon?  Act like nothing happened?  They all wanted me to win and I FAILED them!  I failed the whole school!  They were expecting me to win the tournament and I screwed it up!"  Her fists ground into the bedspread.  "Just add it to the list, I guess!  It's Grieve-tan, everybody, she can't win at kendo, she can't do algebra or chemistry, she can't help pay bills, she can't even breathe or smile right without help!"

Anon straighted up in his chair, scooted forward.  "Hey, hold on - "

Grieve-tan's fingers curled, her knuckles going white.  She looked up at him.  Tears budded in the corners of her eyes.  "It's not fair," she said, voice cracking.  "It's not fair.  I'm trying so hard to be better and I just can't do it."

She was fighting to keep the sudden sadness back, her lip trembling as her gaze fell down again towards her feet.  "I can't."

Anon slipped his hand onto Grieve-tan's cheek.

She looked up, eyes widening.

"Yes, you can," Anon said.  "Because you're still trying and that already makes you better to me."

Her face grew sun-hot, trembling.  Her eyes squeezed narrow, and the tears came freely now, and she placed her hands on his and held his fingers to her skin while she bawled.  Anon rose from his chair and sat next to her, keeping his hand in place, bringing his other around her shoulder and pulling her close to him.

"Thank you," she cried.  "Thank you."

Her other hands twined around his waist, and the heat of her kept the air from the sweeping fan from affecting him.  It wasn't as bad as he expected.

***

The coming weeks would be tough for them.  Grieve-tan still had to handle the aftermath of the tournament, and in that was ample chances to be pissy again.  But she had looked at Anon, once she had wiped the tears and resumed the demeanor of captain of the kendo team, and made her promise.

"I'm going to confront them," she said.  "Coach Dooku and everyone else.  Whatever happens, you're on my side now.  I'm not going to back down this time.  Screw those guys."

Those guys were assholes, Anon always felt that.  But if Grieve-tan could turn around...who knows.  There had to be hope for the others to shape up.

Anon looked up the street.  The paved hill rose up towards his house over the curve.  The sun hung high now, and the road seemed to waver from heat in the distance.  A trick of the eyes and the light.  He took off his jacket and felt the sun blast fulldown on his shoulders.  Tying the jacket around his waist, he looked up, found the telephone pole he used as a distant vantage point, and got on his bicycle.

Getting back up was a pain in the ass.  But Grieve-tan was going to make a new character on Decipher and wanted him to teach her the ropes.  He didn't want to keep her waiting.  He started pedalling up the hill, ignoring how sore his legs quickly got and how much the hot air baked, and figured out answers to questions she'd ask.

Should've stretched first.  His legs would kill him later.  But right now, he was too excited.