Bloody Hoarfrost [C-Rank Mission]

Yuki seemed to be lost in thought again, the sound of sand exploding nothing but noise and not really paying attention to whatever her teammate was doing. Occam speaking broke her out of it, forcing her to focus her hearing to know what he said. He's probably saying to come down now.., she thought while getting up and pausing to notice.. quite a lot of sand all around the area. Yuki carefully crawled down the ladder, it wasn't exactly the most leveled of them either. She jogged up to Occam and looked around. "...How much did you make exactly..?" A better question was how much did he need.

Once all the sand was finally gone, Occam patted the top of his gourd and then looked to Yuki, smiling at her. "Enough. Been meaning to get myself a lot of sand if I'm being honest, I need it for a lot more than just combat you know." He chuckled quietly and then waved for her to follow him as he walked out of the bandit camp. His hands came up and rested on the back of his head and he stayed silent for a small while before finally speaking up. "So what's bothering you? Something seems to have spooked or dazed you? He didn't manage to hit you somewhere did he or grope you or anything like that? Are you surprised you managed to kill someone?" He raised an eyebrow, watching her closely. He generally wasn't the most compassionate of people but he was worried about her and he wanted to make sure she was okay and that nothing bad had happened to her.

Yuki walked alongside Occam, lost in thought, more in the echoes that bounced in her head from the living weapon. She snapped out of it again when she heard Occam speak. "N-no, I wasn't touched anywhere by those creeps, thankfully. It's just.. I don't really know what happened. I could have sworn there was a metal puddle on the ground and then there wasn't..."

'Young lady, I am a living weapon! Not some casual metal puddle!', the voice snapped at her. She stopped and was tempted to look around for the source of the voice again, but it felt like it was everywhere in her mind. Her..mind... The voice was in her head, not actually around her. "Living... Weapon..?" 'Precisely! I granted you with my own greatness the moment we made contact.' So this was the weird puddle she touched? A living weapon?

Occam watched her and nodded along to what she was saying, at least nothing bad had happened to her while she was out of his sight. Maybe he shouldn't have sat around for so long doing not much but he did have a lot of metal sand to show for it. Then she mentioned two words that gave him pause. "Living weapon? Those once belonged to Yoroi and Vanir.... Although all of them are gone now, you're pretty damn lucky I must say if you managed to find one of them. They are powerful weapons and usually grant some really nice abilities when used properly. It's unfortunate you can't make yours as powerful as some Yoroi could but still... To think they had one of those just lying around." Occam sighed softly and pulled out his notepad and a pen before turning to Yuki. "They are sentient by the way so if you're hearing a voice you're probably talking to the Living Weapon. What is its name?" He asked her, pen poised so he could jot down information about this weapon.

'At least the boy knows about me to educate you. I should have granted him with my abilities, since he seems knowledgeable of my kind. I am called Kotsuzui, to answer the boy.' Yuki forgot just how quickly Occam could go from a serious 'cool guy' type to that of a study-obsessed nerd for information. "It... It says its name is Kotsuzui. ..I think I'll call it Kotsu for short." '..Kotsu? Why not use my proper name in full?' She couldn't tell whether the weapon was curious or offended. "Kotsu's faster to say and giving nicknames is a sign of friendship." '...Friendship..? Hmm.. A good constructed relationship between people yet not romantic.' Kotsu seemed to be talking to itself again, taking answers either generated by itself or partially referencing Yuki's thoughts or memories.

She left out that she felt like Kotsuzui didn't really seem to like her, but maybe it was rough in personality from first glance? If Kotsuzui was capable of reading her thoughts, it sure stayed quiet on what it felt towards her. Perhaps it was biding time on its personal judgement or didn't even bother with saying anything since it was stuck with her more than likely until she died.

"Kotsuzui, huh? That's pretty interesting. Doesn't seem like a weapon you carry either, you said it was a puddle of liquid and then disappeared?" Occam scratched his chin with his pen before furrowing his eyebrows. "It's not any of the normal types of Living Weapon, I can usually name those, this seems to be one of the more advanced types that doesn't show up as often. Pretty sure there's someone else in the Nations with one like that... Or at least there was?" He leaned in close and looked over Yuki, trying to see if there were any changes to her at all but he couldn't notice anything. Living Weapons also couldn't be magnetised so it wasn't like he could find out where it was through that either. It was time for more questions.

"So what type of weapon is Kotsuzui? I don't really know where they are, you're not exactly carrying them... Are they internal perhaps? So many things I don't know. It's unfortunate that not many people study Living Weapons. Rikigaku are the ones most likely to do that but the group of them that focuses on this sort of thing are pretty damn rare." A hum left him as he thought and waited for the answers to his questions.

In response to Occam suddenly getting closer to her, she leaned back a little, growing a bit uncomfortable about his sudden curiosity and kept her eyes on him to make sure he wasn't going to do anything too weird. He was her teammate and she did trust him, but she just felt really awkward about how things were going at this moment. 'Hmm... Bloodflow is going towards your head when he did that. What an interesting concept.' "Sh- D- K-Kotsu, j-j-just answer his questions!", she stammered out. 'Very well. I'm an augmented living weapon who lives in a total symbiotic state with my wielder. To achieve this state, I replaced her skeleton.' "Y-YOU WHAT?!" 'I ate your skeleton and merely replaced it with my being. I wouldn't want my wielder and myself to be mere puddles of flesh, that would not be very efficient. I do not really see a problem with this as I am servicing you with a better greatness than what your skeleton can do.'

Yuki sat down, trying to connect dots together, though it was weirdly challenging to do so when shaken up. "Is.. Is that why... I felt so... so cold..." She put a hand on her cheek, her eye showing between her fingers. 'Are you not going to tell the boy my answers?' Yuki let out a shaky breath before relaying what Kotsuzui said to Occam. "He... He says he's an augmented living weapon... And that... He replaced my skeleton... By eating it... And that makes us symbiotic..." Her voice had a small shake in it, though it was hard to tell whether it was from being so overwhelmed about this that she'd cry or that she sounded really defeated.

"An Augmented you say... Huh, that's pretty interesting. It's definitely one of the more advanced types but it's not one that I've ever heard of." He surprisingly didn't seem bothered about it replacing her skeleton and simply scribbled down what she told him before he put his notes away. "Luckily for you, Yuki, Living Weapons when they do things like that are incredibly safe and usually make their wielder better than they were before. Parasitic weapons are kind of like that although not to quite an extreme degree." He scratched his chin and then shrugged before stepping forwards and wrapping his arms around her, holding her softly to his chest.

"Just don't panic alright? When we get back to the village we'll call it a mission complete and we'll get you checked out by a medic, make sure that everything went fine with Kotsuzui although the fact you're walking around kind of tells me that you're okay. So let's go, we're... Quite done here anyway." He smiled and ruffled her hair before turning and walking off, shoving his hands in his pockets and scanning around to make sure no one else attacked them.

'Your heart rate is increasing.' Yuki didn't say anything in response to Kotsu's comment. She wanted to, but the thought of just saying 'shut up' out of nowhere would probably catch Occam's curiosity to what the weapon said to her or if she was saying it to him and the thought of either of those outcomes embarrassed her. She took a few more moments to clear her thoughts as much as possible despite her now permanent... companion rambling in tangents that seemed to have no connection save for ones it probably had itself. She got up and followed Occam, entirely unsure about all this. It was terrifying to learn your skeleton was eaten right after it happened and having no knowledge prior that was possible, regardless of if it improved something. Yuki sighed, Kotsuzui was a living weapon and now her weapon. She'd have to learn to work with it and use it. She'd probably grow into her new skeleton and get over the horrific idea of how a metal-looking puddle replaced her bones.

[Exit]