Post by The Prettiest Squish on Dec 16, 2018 2:59:57 GMT -5
It was dark and it was cold. With her eyelids sealed, Rémi could only perceive with what basic senses were available to her. To her right she could hear the rhythmic tip and tap of a leak from high above the ground, landing in a puddle of some ambiguous liquid. To her left she could hear the distant whirring and humming of machinery operating from far away but loud enough that its sound traveled to her here. She could feel the cold hard plate metal that she rested on, the frigid touch fragmented in separate shapes as though there were an assortment of loose papers acting as her bedding.
The woman groaned and grimaced, her newly lucid state now interrupted by a sudden surge of pain all throughout her body. Her arms were sorely inflamed and her legs felt as weak as gelatin. She could hardly move save for the muscles in her face vividly conveying her turmoil. Rémi squinted hard and her teeth bared to the night sky like some savage mutt. "This is bullshit", the girl could only cry out in complaint what with nothing to attend to other than loathing the pain she endured. Until the pang of a dropped steel drum startled her so much that her eyes burst open from their fleshy coffin and revealed her lustrous silver hues once more to the world. "What the fu- who's there!?" Her eyes darted from one side to another, left and right, then up and down, and a third time she combined them all. There was nothing more to look at than a rusty brown ceiling comprised of several metal sheets with an occasional hole for the water to leak through. She recognized the tip tap from the large gash to her right.
As she continued to search however, a pair of footsteps softly crept up from...above her - or behind her - she was facing vertically so to say they came from behind would mean she was being approached from beneath - regardless, the owner of the enigmatic trotters brushed against the powdery floor as they moved closer and closer. Rémi could only grow anxious as the sound of a stranger neared towards her spot at while she was most vulnerable. She shouted with slight panic, "Don't move any closer or I'll...I'll...I'll break my foot off in your ass!" Whoever walked the plains did not cease their venture. The footsteps were a mere yard away now and the earthbound woman felt her fists instinctively tightening with a struggle for they had not fully healed from the damage they sustained. She waited with impatience, sweat beginning to form at the peak of her forehead. And then out from the uppermost frame of her limited vision popped out a tiny face with an innocent smile, "Good evening, Missus! How are you today?"
"...Huh?"
Rémi sat plastered to a wooden crate, her upper body now free from the harshness of a cold metal mattress. Her back was still quite stiff but with the support of her tiny friend, Erina, she managed to get her body warmed up enough to turn the old gears. Erina, she thought. The pink-haired guest stared longingly at her hostess who had been cooking on a bonfire for the past few minutes, with a makeshift skillet she constructed from a rod and cast iron plating. In the couple of hours she had known her small acquaintance, Rémi was revealed the details of the incident that befell her. Her memory had been hazy and she was not one to dream in her sleep, which according to the child had been going on for two and a half days. The injuries she suffered from her skirmish with the gangsters had not yet fully recovered.
Much of the bruising had healed for sure but the largest harm came to the bones in her legs and back. Erina was quite cheery in her retelling of the ordeal: the concrete wall of an apartment complex, several inches thick and at least ten feet high and teen feet wide came toppling down in front of her, ready to clobber the poor girl into a pile of mush until the fiery haired warrior rushed to her rescue, with body glowing red and muscles bulging with power. Rémi admittedly smiled and admired her arms when that portion of the tale passed over.
But now she sat with both arms at her sides, unable to bend. Her legs stared back at her with contempt for their master, aching at the betrayal she put them through. She sighed. Footsteps approached her. "Here ya go, Missus! I made it myself~" the tiny Erina walked over to her with an unidentifiable heap of gray on a dirty tin sheet. Rémi's nose immediately turned at the horrid aroma that came her way. She had grown up on a farm with natural ingredients and a healthy diet. This slop was by far the worst thing she'd ever seen on a plate - if one could even call it that. She gagged before issuing a statement for her companion, "Uh, no thanks kid. Besides, I couldn't eat that even if I wanted." Which she didn't.
But young Erina insisted upon it and shoved the oozing gray slime back into Rémi's face. "It's okay, I'll feed you!" And so the child lay her portion down on the floor and pulled out a spoon from her hair. Rémi's stomach turned. Erina kneeled down to meet the face of her protector and scooped a pile of piping hot what-is-it onto the utensil. A train of thoughts ran through Rémilia's head, one of which included regret for not letting the child suffer her destiny. As she pondered what other avenues of fate could have prevented this ordeal, the curved vessel and its slippery passenger slowly flew toward her mouth inch by inch. She frantically reassured herself internally by making up lies to feel as calm as possible, Don't throw up. She made it for you. Don't show it. Just swallow and everything will be fine. You've been through worse than this. The sludge contacted her pink lips and the scent wafted up into her nostrils. A mixture of dirty sock water and moldy cheese filled up the chambers of her nose until her eyes wept with agony. "Wowie! It's so good you're crying!" The muck slowly moved to her teeth, mere molecules away from her tongue when suddenly - an explosive clatter came from the west end.
Erina jumped up in shock and consequently dropped the gunk with it. Rémi sighed and replenished her lungs as though her life depended on it. Her tiny friend on the other hand was frozen still staring at the direction from which the sound originated. She shivered like a cornered mother rat sheltering her babies from the fangs of rabid cats. Her fair skin went paler than the fresh steam of a piping hot stew. Rémi by her eighth breath was able to notice the sudden shift in tone and quietly asked her, "Hey, Erina...Everything all right?"
The small thing picked herself off the floor without a word and scraped up the slime she prepared for her guest off the floor. Her fingers were petrified and stiff as stone as they dug out the gunk from the dirt. When she finished cleaning up the mess, her back turned to Rémi and she walked to her little station in the back of the building to dispose of the 'food'. When she returned, Rémi face changed from that of a disgusted diner to one of a concerned mother. She saw Erina's eyes -blank and hollow - staring at an abyss that never existed. Her face was whiter than the teeth of an orthodontist and sweating profusely. What the hell is wrong with her?
The tiny girl sat down at the spot opposite to her guest and quietly ate her muck without a twitch of disgust. Rémi softly gasped. "Kid. Tell me what's wrong." Erina only stared at the void, never blinking as she chewed the gray slime with resistance. A second time the woman asked, "Kid, what happened to you?" And again, the fragile thing munched silently with her lenses fixated on that which was not there. Rémi was beginning to lose it, she could feel herself losing control. Where was the smile, the joy? That cheery voice that greeted her upon her awakening? Who was this corpse of a girl in front of her? She seethed her teeth with rage, not out of anger but for concern. Please tell me what's wrong, Erina! What's gotten into you? Her heart beat vitality through her veins for the first time since her rebirth, sending sensation down from her fingers all the way to her toes. She felt power in places that had not felt strength in two and a half days. And she had to use it for something.
Rémi pulled her head back as far as it could go and focused her energy on her abdominal area. She breathed in and out for she did not know how else to prepare herself for what pain was yet to come. Her abs tensed up and she puckered her lips together. The woman then threw her head forward and sucked her belly in to catapult her body onto the soulless body of young Erina. She crashed on top of her and came face to face with little Erina, whose eyes were now solely fixated on her own. Rémi's face said it all: squinted eyes, a tight jaw and bared teeth, heavy breathing. But within seconds the expression subsided and a new one emerged; a face of confidence and control. She whispered for the final time as the child looked into her eyes, "What's wrong?" A sniffle echoed through the empty building.
Rémi gasped. From her two round eyes, Erina cried a river of tears that cascaded over her face like waterfalls. Her lips quivered and her nose began to run. She looked up at her protector, her savior, the one she could trust the most and answered truthfully, sobbing as she did so, "Everything. Everything's wrong with me."
A moment later, when the two had managed to settle into a more appropriate seating arrangement, the real conversation began.
The woman went first. "So what did you mean, when you said everything?"
Erina sat bundled in her knees, Rémi's own coat wrapped snugly around her shoulders. She had made a small fire for themselves and was staring into it intently but not with the same soulless look she had given earlier. Her eyes were far more longing - longing for something, that which Rémi did not know. The girl finally spoke after a brief pause, with naught but a whisper, "2 years ago, I was a daughter. I had a mommy and daddy that looked after me before Missus."
Rémi slightly frowned that she was still not being referred to by name but forgave the gesture. She nodded to the child as to signal for her to resume the story.
Erina gave a weak smile before staring back into the flames and continued, "My mommy and daddy were really nice and had many things. I had many things too. But one day I learned why we had such nice things." The listener noticed that her storytelling friend was squeezing on tight to her hands for comfort. She sensed the story was not heading to an auspicious place.
"My daddy worked for a man, a bad man. And the bad man promised daddy nice things if he work for him. But when I got older, daddy said no more work and the bad man got mad. He promised to hurt daddy." Erina's voice faltered at the end, choking on her words as the last syllables came out of her throat. Rémi gently shushed her and whispered words of reassurance. The child wiped a few tears from the corner of her eye and cleared her throat. She sighed and glanced at her guest before looking back into the embers.
"So my daddy planned to leave, with me and mommy together. But the bad man had a lot of friends and the bad friends came to us and...and..." Erina burst into tears before continuing on and buried her little face in between her palms. The edges of the fire extinguished as the drops escaped through her fingers and fell below. Rémi saw this and growled to herself, fully aware what actions could have led such a young girl to cry this way. She focused on her arm closest to Erina and pulled with all of her might to raise it from the ground. It bent slowly but surely until it ascended though still shaking with soreness. Rémi groaned silently as her arm moved toward Erina and gently brushed her hair. At once, the child's sobbing ceased and she peeked from her hiding spot with eyes red and wet. The woman's hand changed to a finger and wiped away the tears still left on the daughter's cheek. "It's okay, I'm here." she spoke with such softness in her voice that it sounded like a stranger's. But it worked and little Erina nodded before wiping her face with her tattered garments.
The child looked to the flames again but this time shifted her gaze back to her guardian. Rémi sensed that the warmth of her protector felt safer than the fire itself. She smiled to her storyteller and asked if she could continue. She did.
"The bad men came. And they killed my daddy. And they killed my mommy. Right in front of me." There were no more tears to shed for the child had wept all that she could. All that was left was the sorrow in her tiny face. "Were they the same men who were chasing you back then?" The girl nodded. She stared longingly into the abyss but with much more feeling than before, as though she were fading back to a memory. Rémi was about to speak up when she continued, "They shot them. With guns. And rockets. And bombs. They blew up my mommy and blew up my daddy. They went everywhere." Erina breathed in heavily to compose herself and played with her hands.
From the silence, Rémi asked a vital question with an obvious answer, "Is that why the noise freaked you out so much? Because of...the bad men?" But the child simply blinked and shook her head slowly. "I don't like to remember that day, really. Too much red." She sank in between her knees again but this time the woman did not object to it. The girl deserved a moment of reprieve from the horrors she was asked to relive. But there was something that Rémi was curious about that did not match the nightmare the child recalled. With caution, she asked, "Erina, sweetheart? With mommy and daddy gone...how do you smile?" It was at that moment Rémi knew that she messed up. The question was overly insensitive especially after the heart wrenching tale she just heard. And she would have apologized immediately after she said it if it wasn't for Erina's giggling and cheeky grin.
"Hehe, I smile. And I laugh. Because it was the last thing daddy wanted to see, the last thing of me that he would remember." Her giggling turned into a boisterous guffaw, echoing through the lonely rusty warehouse that sheltered from the cold night. It would have been comforting had Rémi not felt so disturbed by the daugher's past. Even far more disturbing was the fact that Erina's eyes were leaking once more, tears welling up and spilling into the flames until the wisps died into a blackened pile of ashes with a handful of orange dots embedded in the remains. All the while she smiled and laughed, staring blankly into the void hoping for a father to see how 'happy' she was.
Her laughed died down until she was grinning at the darkness with wide, moistened eyes. "That's why I can't die, Missus. I need him to remember me. Anyone to remember. Always." Erina dropped her gaze into the pile of ash she put out with her sobbing and shut her eyes. Rémi watched her patiently, hardly moving an inch - not that she could. Seconds passed. Then minutes. Half an hour. Erina's eyes remained closed and Rémi watched her with whatever light remained in this defunct warehouse. Then, as if to remind the woman how late it was, the child fell back on the ground and rumbled with quite an adorable snore. She grinned warmly and wished the girl good night, though she would be unable to hear it in her dreams. As for herself, Rémi felt her body was off its rhythm as the absence of a sun and the arrival of a moon did nothing to exhaust her.
If I've been sleeping for almost three days, I'm bound to have fucked up my internal clock. Which means I can either sit here for another eight hours to get some shuteye or... She scanned around hoping to find what she needed. To the left was the same stupid puddle from before, to the right was a caved in wall with broken windows. She stretched her head behind and caught sight of just the thing she was looking for. In the back corner of Erina's little kitchen were large buckets filled to the brim with scrap metal parts. I think it's about time we get this body back in shape.
In the hours of the night that followed, the warehouse was filled with the noisy and repulsive grunts of a sweaty and persistent woman getting back on her feet. And in the final hour where the dawn transformed to morning, the clang and pang of steel rang true in the frigid air.
Little Erina snuggled inside her white coat with a warm smile for it had been the first piece of comfort the girl experienced in two years. She rubbed her cheeks against the inside and smelled the cloth, sea salt and gun powder. Not quite the scent she was looking for. The girl then rubbed her eyes and sat up only to notice her peculiar friend had vanished from her sitting spot. "Missus? Where did you go?" Erina searched around from her makeshift bed until she turned and saw the aforementioned maiden lying on the ground with jaw agape and a bubble ballooning from her nose. The child chuckled at the sight of her guardian asleep in such a comedic way.
She crawled on her knees quietly and soon found herself face to face with the dozing damsel. Erina smiled and put her hands in a cone in front of her mouth, "Good morning, sleepyhead!"
At once, Rémi's killer instincts kicked in and with the popping of her snot bubble came an unmistakable fury in the form of her fist, rising into the air so swiftly that the bangs on Erina's forehead flew upward. The child sat with eyes wide open and was left speechless. Her protector on the other hand gathered a few seconds to recompose herself and sat back up with a large yawn. She turned to see the child scared stiff from the power of her single punch and laughed. Her hand went to pat the daughter's head reassuringly as she had done to comfort her before. "Aw, did I scare you? Hah, you're okay. Just - old habits die hard." The two laughed together in the emptiness of the warehouse and eventually made their way into the station at the back.
"So what were you thinking for breakfast?" As she passed by the shelves of rations that Erina collected over her two years alone, Rémi couldn't help but grimace at the lack of variety in the collection. There were clearly expired cans of broth, beans, mushroom soup, things that would typically taste fine if they were served under proper conditions but more than half of the lids were broken in and already leaked a scent that smelled of something putrid she could not bear to say. They traveled further back and found a refrigerator tucked into a dark dusty corner. Rat pellets and spider webs decorated both sides of the cooling unit; an unpleasant introduction to a food storage facility.
But Erina pulled open the door and revealed, to Rémi's surprise, a hefty assortment of meats, cheeses, breads and beverages. What on earth was she doing eating garbage in cans when she was fully stocked with these amazing ingredients in pristine condition? Curious, the guest dug her gluttonous fingers into the fridge and pulled out a whole ham, uneaten and still wrapped. Her mouth began to water and a sparkle in her eyes gave away how desperately she wished to swallow the meat whole but one look down at the bewildered babe and Rémi returned to her senses. "It's a good stash, ahem. But why don't you touch this stuff? That shi- er - food back there is kinda rancid."
Erina pouted and sighed. "I know it's nasty. But eating nice things reminds me bad things. About my mommy and daddy." She closed the fridge door and walked away, leaving her tall friend to stand watch over the storage unit. Rémi watched as the girl grabbed a can of brown vegetable broth and black canned tomatoes and could only wonder just how badly she'd been eating for the past two years. Her eyes returned to the fridge door and she began to think. I need fuel to get my body back in shape but I can't eat this all by myself. There's gotta be a way... She opened the fridge and peered inside for a closer inspection. Aside from the ham, she saw bacon, chicken thighs, cheddar, parmesan, swiss, white bread, rye and sourdough. Three for each kind. Hmm. If she lived so fancy, then I can guess she's never had an old fashioned sammich. The lightbulb clicked and Rémi grinned to herself. They would be eating well tonight. But before she or the child could get a proper munching, they'd have to earn it. It was time to get the ol' engine roaring back again.
Rémi shut the door and returned to the newly rekindled bonfire - post-sobbing. Erina had in her skillet the chunky bits of canned tomatoes stewing in a vegetable broth. She had apparently grabbed some beans along the way and mushed them into a thick paste to mix with the tomatoes. Rémi felt like gagging just at the sight of it. But she refrained from doing so and poked her little friend to offer a proposal. Erina turned her pretty head and smiled at her protector. "Hm? Yes, Missus?"
The gray eyed guardian stared intently into the hues of her small companion, setting her up for the seriousness of what she had to say. Erina understood immediately and took her skillet off the flames before facing Rémi with a stern look. The woman gave a small smile and asked, "Are there any heavy weights around here?"
Intrigued, Erina shook her head but stopped midway when she put a finger to her chin and pondered for a few seconds. Her eyes brightened up and she looked back up at the woman. "Oh! This place was a construction factory! I think you could find some heavy blocks!" She smiled so warmly that it felt like the morning was radiating from her teeth. Rémi nodded and pat her head then rose up to stare into the far corners of the warehouse. "Good, I've been dying for a workout. And I think you could use some exercise too, Twigs." The word exercise confused the poor skinny girl and she tugged at the pants of her guardian. "What is exercise?" she asked so innocently, with her stick-like arms pulling at the woman's shorts. Rémi grinned and rolled up her sleeves, revealing her bulging biceps. She rose them to her face and flexed until the veins in her arms popped out with high definition. The child jumped back in surprise and giggled uncontrollably, probably from remembering the hero who saved her under the concrete wall.
The pink haired warrior smiled as she boasted, "What is exercise? Exercise is a lifestyle. It's hard work. But if you're strong enough to see it through," She breathed in and posed with a dynamic angle, fully displaying the physique she built. "You can become anything." The little Erina stared starstruck with twinkles in her pupils and drool pouring from the corners of her lips. Rémi laughed and pat the child's hair yet again. "So what do you say, little Erina? Are you willing?" She could hardly get her hand off the runt's head before the kid shot a fist into the air with determination unlike anything she'd ever seen from her. Rémi's eyes opened wide. Erina smiled with two little beads in the corners of her eyes. "I am!...I want to become stronger!" The guardian smirked and nodded. They were ready.
The search for sufficient weights was extremely easy given that the warehouse was an old concrete factory. Whatever the reason for them leaving did not matter as their abandonment of the facility left behind a good number of various weights measured in stone. The smallest unit was a brick, no bigger than the woman's foot and light enough that Erina could lift it with one hand. Rémi gauged that it weighed roughly 8 pounds and guessed it would serve as a proper beginning weight for the child; but it would do nothing in the way of progress for the hardened fighter. She would require greater weight.
They walked through a gallery of stonework, possibly left behind as samples or templates for the stone project. The first was the brick, the second was a cinderblock, and the third was a solid gray cube about half of the woman's height and equally measured on all sides. This was the one, she thought to herself. Rémi bent down and clutched the bottommost surface of the block and pulled. It scratched against the floor as she brought it up from the dirt but eventually it rose up several inches into the air.
"Whoa!!" Erina cried out with shock. The square boulder floated off the ground tucked in the bosom of the lady Dermott, whose red face and bulging eyes gave away just how heavy it was. Her fingertips went whiter than snow and Erina's joyful surprise melted to concern. "Mi-Missus? Are you ok-" Before the last word could be spoken, Rémi let out a ghastly sigh and the block dropped to the ground with a solid thud, knocking up a plume of dust at their feet. The both of them coughed up a fit but only the woman laughed in between the violent discharges. "Ha ha ha!"
"Ach ahach! Why are you laughing, Missus?" Poor tiny Erina rubbed her eyes in retaliation of the kicked up dirt in her face. Only a short moment after when the dust had finally settled, she opened her eyes and saw her guardian stand tall above her with the sunlight shining from behind, lighting up her silhouette. Her jaw gaped wide with wonder. And Rémi peered down at her pupil with a confident smile. She pointed to the cinderblock adjacent to their booth and said, "Starting today, that is your workload." Erina stared at the massive block of concrete that awaited her test of strength. She felt herself already beginning to sweat. The girl faced her teacher immediately with a sorrowful look on her face, "B-but I can carry the first one! Shouldn't that be my workload?"
But her master gestured two fingers at her lips, signaling for the young apprentice to behave herself and remain silent. Rémi then took those two fingers and pointed down at the cube that gave her a challenge to merely lift for a few seconds. She brought a thumb and aimed it at herself, "And as for myself, this will be my workload." Erina let out a perplexed sound that was neither of human nor creature. "B-but you can barely lift it, Missus. Shouldn't we do it easy first and then-"
A sudden stomp from the fiery haired woman put an end to the child's begging. She pouted her lips and awaited further instruction. Rémi put on a more serious expression and stared harshly into her student's eyes. "In this world, easy gets you nowhere. Sure, a few years of taking it easy and you might see yourself grow. But a few days of hell and you can become greater than you can possibly imagine." She flexed her arms yet again in a show of power and watched her pupil beam with inspiration. Her face shifted to a cheeky grin, "Now let's get to work."
Shortly after the two agreed to start their exercise, Rémi found a pile of bricks and blocks identical to their respective weights. The master, knowing full well the limits of her pupil gave her two cinderblocks to work with at first and assigned a great number of sets with low repetitions to get a feel for how long the child could continue. Rémi, on the other hand, was fully aware of how far she could go. The dame found a steel rod that would act as the bar for her workout and worked on spending the beginning of her session drilling holes through several blocks all the while observing her student's progress.
The exhaustion set in quick for little Erina. She was an energetic thing, swift as a river from the day she first chased the damn rascal. But her limbs were frail, as her nickname Twigs implied. Within two minutes of her sets, she was already starting to slow down and breathe heavily. Her arms shook violently with each ascent they made and her tiny hands went whiter than powdered sugar from gripping so tightly to the coarse stone blocks. Yet she kept on pushing, eyes focused on the horizon without ever dropping down in doubt of herself. Rémi smiled and knew that she would not give up so easily. But now the matter of her own workout was at hand. The final block was drilled and she was ready to begin.
Rémi grabbed a handful of sediment powder, probably a cement formula yet to be used. She rubbed her hands with the dust as they would prevent the bar from slipping out of her hands; she'd been through this before but traditionally used chalk instead. She took one last look at her student heaving the 20-something pound bricks up to her shoulder, down her chest then to her sides and back up again. The sight of this weak, tiny and scared little girl growing stronger in mere minutes gave her hope for herself. Her gray eyes then glanced at her sides to see gray cubes neatly skewered to resemble a makeshift weightlifting bar. At her current strength, she would only dare to lift two and would move on from there if successful. She took her footing and gripped the bar tightly, pulling only slightly to get a feel for how heavy the blocks were. They did not budge an inch. The brawny lady breathed in deeply to prepare and she braced her legs for the inevitable collapse. It's show time. Her palms tightened, her back tensed and her legs swelled all at once. The gray cubes flew off the ground in a hurry and locked into place right beside her crimson tinted face.
Fuck. Fuck. This fucking sucks, dude. But she held those damned blocks and that infernal bar on top of her shoulders. The iron dug into her tissue and rolled against the bone. Her spine rattled and creaked from every pound that pushed against it. But she held. Her thighs vibrated to the frequency of a hummingbird, nearly imperceptible yet violently tumultuous. They were ringing the song of pain and struggle. But she held. Through sheer will and determination, Rémi sucked in whatever she could manage through puckered lips as red as the ripest strawberry. Her chest rose with the gust of fresh air. Blood boiled in her face like it was a kettle and her ears glowed with a scarlet ambience as the sun shone through them. But still, she held.
"Hrrggg..." was all the grunting she could muster in that vulnerable state. As she stood now, the master was nothing more than a statue frozen in place with the weight of the earth atop her, hoping to sink back to its mother and away from this sweaty barbarian. The woman understood if she remained in such a pose, there would be no progress, only pain. She breathed in once more, however much it hurt her to do so. With newly reaped breath, Rémi dug deep inside herself and flexed her arms and shoulders to perform the impossible. Her thighs braced themselves to push. The girl took one final breath of caution and screamed at the top of her lungs as she raised the bar above her head, "AHHHHHH!!!!!!" The sudden explosion startled the young Erina who had already reached her tenth set and was drenched from head to toe. She promptly dropped the cinderblocks to her feet and fell to her bottom at the sound of her guardian in so much pain.
Numerous veins all lining the exterior of Rémi's neck shot up to her blood-red scowl, fueling the woman's scarlet skin. She bared her fangs and squinted her eyes, quaking all over her body while doing so. From a glance, the lady resembled demon more than woman and could easily pass as such with how hideous she seethed and foamed at the mouth. Young Erina watched on with shock and covered her mouth so as not to disturb this session of hell with her tiny but noticeable gasps of horrors.
The guardian warrior's mind felt blank while she held the bar above her head. All the thoughts that traveled on her locomotive of contemplation jumped overboard when the rails grew infernally hot and the incessant ringing of a kettle played in her ears. She was blind at the moment, unable to open her eyes as the skin of her face felt tighter than a straitjacket on a sumo wrestler. Yet somehow, she still held. Or so it seemed. Without warning, Rémi felt a jolt of panic run up her spine when the shaking in her legs evolved to a whole new state of numbness. Not numbness in the sense she was free of the agony within but that the signals she sent commanding them to move were not getting across. She did not need her eyes to know that the horizon was lowering; her legs were collapsing and she was about to fall. No...you...fucking...DON'T!!
Her front knee was the first to give in but before it could bow completely to the power of the earth, the brawny brute released her other leg and kneeled to keep herself composed. The gravity of her descent and shift of focus to her legs then severed her strength from her arms and the weight of the stone blocks came crashing down on her back with a mighty thud. Now she found herself in a predicament beyond the lifting of a heavy weight.
"Missus!" To the side, she could hear little Erina rushing to her aid but instinct prevailed and the proud, burly dame shouted despite her extreme situation, "GET BACK! DO NOT HELP ME IN ANY WAY! THIS IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO DO ON MY OWN!" And so the child reluctantly came to a halt and dropped to a squat with her fingers veiling her slack jawed pout. She whimpered like a sobbing infant and Rémi knew she could not allow her pupil to see her this way. Her teeth opened passage for a new burst of wind to awaken her spirit. She tightly gripped the bar with her sediment coated fingers. The girl thanked her lucky stars she was clever enough to remember such safety precautions.
But now was no time to be congratulating her foresight, now was the time for action. Rémi controlled her breathing and tested her front leg to see how much load she could bear and began to groan when the fibers in her thigh felt they were ripping apart. It's all for progress. she told herself but the pain only served to remind her of that fateful day she nearly died protecting the young girl. How her bones cracked and shattered under such an immense burden. But she was no quitter, she had faced better men with greater strength and could not be so easily beaten by a pair of lowly concrete dice. This was no game and she was no player. It was a trial and she was the defendant. Win or die, this was the final test.
Rémilia opened her eyes and saw the desperate face of her pupil, crying and sobbing with fear. And in that instance of bliss, where the pain subsided and she could only feel her duties of a guardian shining through, she smiled at Erina and gave her a thumbs up on both hands. The kid gasped with awe. And Rémi dug deep once more.
Her thighs bulged and ballooned to almost twice their size, at an inhuman scale that felt unnatural even for someone as brawny as her. Her red skin had now ignited into an excruciating violet as the veins in her eyes crawled out from their sockets like bloody bolts of lightning. She suppressed scream after scream with her tightly shut mouth and truly appeared as though she were ready to explode. One final look she gave to her trainee and the woman felt no fear any longer, she breathed. And she let go.
With one swift movement, Rémi danced from a knelt prisoner to a triumphant champion, iron bar overhead, both stones at her side with the trail of dust still flying upwards from the momentum of her ascent. Her lift could only be described as a rocket, rapid and explosive. In her proud stance, she let out a victorious roar that echoed through the warehouse and far into the slums of the city,
Erina simply sat and marveled, with eyes glowing and mouth wide open. The conqueror of the stone trial threw down her challenger to the floor with a crash that shook the very earth they stood on. Rémi heaved sigh after sigh and looked to her student with a satisfied grin, she pointed to the weights and exhaled like a breeze, "Never take it easy." She smiled as wide as her cheeks would allow and fell on her back with outstretched arms.
About an hour later, she recovered from her slumber and awoke to the sight of Erina massaging her worked out muscles. The two made eye contact and laughed with a camaraderie as though they had known each other for years. Rémi then decided that now was the time to see if the girl was ready. "For dinner tonight." Her voice caught the student's attention and she listened dutifully to her master's next words. "I'll be cooking from what's in the fridge tonight, but it won't be something you'd have before." She sensed that spark of uncertainty on Erina's face when mentioning the refrigerator but pressed on persistently. "If it doesn't remind you of your mommy and daddy, will you please try it?" A few seconds of silence passed by before the child gave her answer in the form of a smile and two cheery eyes, "I can try!" It was hesitant but good enough for Dermott. So with that accord, she sat back with eyes closed and napped as her apprentice soothed the soreness of her broken body. Tonight, they would dine, dine better than they had for a long time.
The woman groaned and grimaced, her newly lucid state now interrupted by a sudden surge of pain all throughout her body. Her arms were sorely inflamed and her legs felt as weak as gelatin. She could hardly move save for the muscles in her face vividly conveying her turmoil. Rémi squinted hard and her teeth bared to the night sky like some savage mutt. "This is bullshit", the girl could only cry out in complaint what with nothing to attend to other than loathing the pain she endured. Until the pang of a dropped steel drum startled her so much that her eyes burst open from their fleshy coffin and revealed her lustrous silver hues once more to the world. "What the fu- who's there!?" Her eyes darted from one side to another, left and right, then up and down, and a third time she combined them all. There was nothing more to look at than a rusty brown ceiling comprised of several metal sheets with an occasional hole for the water to leak through. She recognized the tip tap from the large gash to her right.
As she continued to search however, a pair of footsteps softly crept up from...above her - or behind her - she was facing vertically so to say they came from behind would mean she was being approached from beneath - regardless, the owner of the enigmatic trotters brushed against the powdery floor as they moved closer and closer. Rémi could only grow anxious as the sound of a stranger neared towards her spot at while she was most vulnerable. She shouted with slight panic, "Don't move any closer or I'll...I'll...I'll break my foot off in your ass!" Whoever walked the plains did not cease their venture. The footsteps were a mere yard away now and the earthbound woman felt her fists instinctively tightening with a struggle for they had not fully healed from the damage they sustained. She waited with impatience, sweat beginning to form at the peak of her forehead. And then out from the uppermost frame of her limited vision popped out a tiny face with an innocent smile, "Good evening, Missus! How are you today?"
"...Huh?"
2 hours later...
Rémi sat plastered to a wooden crate, her upper body now free from the harshness of a cold metal mattress. Her back was still quite stiff but with the support of her tiny friend, Erina, she managed to get her body warmed up enough to turn the old gears. Erina, she thought. The pink-haired guest stared longingly at her hostess who had been cooking on a bonfire for the past few minutes, with a makeshift skillet she constructed from a rod and cast iron plating. In the couple of hours she had known her small acquaintance, Rémi was revealed the details of the incident that befell her. Her memory had been hazy and she was not one to dream in her sleep, which according to the child had been going on for two and a half days. The injuries she suffered from her skirmish with the gangsters had not yet fully recovered.
Much of the bruising had healed for sure but the largest harm came to the bones in her legs and back. Erina was quite cheery in her retelling of the ordeal: the concrete wall of an apartment complex, several inches thick and at least ten feet high and teen feet wide came toppling down in front of her, ready to clobber the poor girl into a pile of mush until the fiery haired warrior rushed to her rescue, with body glowing red and muscles bulging with power. Rémi admittedly smiled and admired her arms when that portion of the tale passed over.
But now she sat with both arms at her sides, unable to bend. Her legs stared back at her with contempt for their master, aching at the betrayal she put them through. She sighed. Footsteps approached her. "Here ya go, Missus! I made it myself~" the tiny Erina walked over to her with an unidentifiable heap of gray on a dirty tin sheet. Rémi's nose immediately turned at the horrid aroma that came her way. She had grown up on a farm with natural ingredients and a healthy diet. This slop was by far the worst thing she'd ever seen on a plate - if one could even call it that. She gagged before issuing a statement for her companion, "Uh, no thanks kid. Besides, I couldn't eat that even if I wanted." Which she didn't.
But young Erina insisted upon it and shoved the oozing gray slime back into Rémi's face. "It's okay, I'll feed you!" And so the child lay her portion down on the floor and pulled out a spoon from her hair. Rémi's stomach turned. Erina kneeled down to meet the face of her protector and scooped a pile of piping hot what-is-it onto the utensil. A train of thoughts ran through Rémilia's head, one of which included regret for not letting the child suffer her destiny. As she pondered what other avenues of fate could have prevented this ordeal, the curved vessel and its slippery passenger slowly flew toward her mouth inch by inch. She frantically reassured herself internally by making up lies to feel as calm as possible, Don't throw up. She made it for you. Don't show it. Just swallow and everything will be fine. You've been through worse than this. The sludge contacted her pink lips and the scent wafted up into her nostrils. A mixture of dirty sock water and moldy cheese filled up the chambers of her nose until her eyes wept with agony. "Wowie! It's so good you're crying!" The muck slowly moved to her teeth, mere molecules away from her tongue when suddenly - an explosive clatter came from the west end.
Erina jumped up in shock and consequently dropped the gunk with it. Rémi sighed and replenished her lungs as though her life depended on it. Her tiny friend on the other hand was frozen still staring at the direction from which the sound originated. She shivered like a cornered mother rat sheltering her babies from the fangs of rabid cats. Her fair skin went paler than the fresh steam of a piping hot stew. Rémi by her eighth breath was able to notice the sudden shift in tone and quietly asked her, "Hey, Erina...Everything all right?"
The small thing picked herself off the floor without a word and scraped up the slime she prepared for her guest off the floor. Her fingers were petrified and stiff as stone as they dug out the gunk from the dirt. When she finished cleaning up the mess, her back turned to Rémi and she walked to her little station in the back of the building to dispose of the 'food'. When she returned, Rémi face changed from that of a disgusted diner to one of a concerned mother. She saw Erina's eyes -blank and hollow - staring at an abyss that never existed. Her face was whiter than the teeth of an orthodontist and sweating profusely. What the hell is wrong with her?
The tiny girl sat down at the spot opposite to her guest and quietly ate her muck without a twitch of disgust. Rémi softly gasped. "Kid. Tell me what's wrong." Erina only stared at the void, never blinking as she chewed the gray slime with resistance. A second time the woman asked, "Kid, what happened to you?" And again, the fragile thing munched silently with her lenses fixated on that which was not there. Rémi was beginning to lose it, she could feel herself losing control. Where was the smile, the joy? That cheery voice that greeted her upon her awakening? Who was this corpse of a girl in front of her? She seethed her teeth with rage, not out of anger but for concern. Please tell me what's wrong, Erina! What's gotten into you? Her heart beat vitality through her veins for the first time since her rebirth, sending sensation down from her fingers all the way to her toes. She felt power in places that had not felt strength in two and a half days. And she had to use it for something.
Rémi pulled her head back as far as it could go and focused her energy on her abdominal area. She breathed in and out for she did not know how else to prepare herself for what pain was yet to come. Her abs tensed up and she puckered her lips together. The woman then threw her head forward and sucked her belly in to catapult her body onto the soulless body of young Erina. She crashed on top of her and came face to face with little Erina, whose eyes were now solely fixated on her own. Rémi's face said it all: squinted eyes, a tight jaw and bared teeth, heavy breathing. But within seconds the expression subsided and a new one emerged; a face of confidence and control. She whispered for the final time as the child looked into her eyes, "What's wrong?" A sniffle echoed through the empty building.
Rémi gasped. From her two round eyes, Erina cried a river of tears that cascaded over her face like waterfalls. Her lips quivered and her nose began to run. She looked up at her protector, her savior, the one she could trust the most and answered truthfully, sobbing as she did so, "Everything. Everything's wrong with me."
A moment later, when the two had managed to settle into a more appropriate seating arrangement, the real conversation began.
The woman went first. "So what did you mean, when you said everything?"
Erina sat bundled in her knees, Rémi's own coat wrapped snugly around her shoulders. She had made a small fire for themselves and was staring into it intently but not with the same soulless look she had given earlier. Her eyes were far more longing - longing for something, that which Rémi did not know. The girl finally spoke after a brief pause, with naught but a whisper, "2 years ago, I was a daughter. I had a mommy and daddy that looked after me before Missus."
Rémi slightly frowned that she was still not being referred to by name but forgave the gesture. She nodded to the child as to signal for her to resume the story.
Erina gave a weak smile before staring back into the flames and continued, "My mommy and daddy were really nice and had many things. I had many things too. But one day I learned why we had such nice things." The listener noticed that her storytelling friend was squeezing on tight to her hands for comfort. She sensed the story was not heading to an auspicious place.
"My daddy worked for a man, a bad man. And the bad man promised daddy nice things if he work for him. But when I got older, daddy said no more work and the bad man got mad. He promised to hurt daddy." Erina's voice faltered at the end, choking on her words as the last syllables came out of her throat. Rémi gently shushed her and whispered words of reassurance. The child wiped a few tears from the corner of her eye and cleared her throat. She sighed and glanced at her guest before looking back into the embers.
"So my daddy planned to leave, with me and mommy together. But the bad man had a lot of friends and the bad friends came to us and...and..." Erina burst into tears before continuing on and buried her little face in between her palms. The edges of the fire extinguished as the drops escaped through her fingers and fell below. Rémi saw this and growled to herself, fully aware what actions could have led such a young girl to cry this way. She focused on her arm closest to Erina and pulled with all of her might to raise it from the ground. It bent slowly but surely until it ascended though still shaking with soreness. Rémi groaned silently as her arm moved toward Erina and gently brushed her hair. At once, the child's sobbing ceased and she peeked from her hiding spot with eyes red and wet. The woman's hand changed to a finger and wiped away the tears still left on the daughter's cheek. "It's okay, I'm here." she spoke with such softness in her voice that it sounded like a stranger's. But it worked and little Erina nodded before wiping her face with her tattered garments.
The child looked to the flames again but this time shifted her gaze back to her guardian. Rémi sensed that the warmth of her protector felt safer than the fire itself. She smiled to her storyteller and asked if she could continue. She did.
"The bad men came. And they killed my daddy. And they killed my mommy. Right in front of me." There were no more tears to shed for the child had wept all that she could. All that was left was the sorrow in her tiny face. "Were they the same men who were chasing you back then?" The girl nodded. She stared longingly into the abyss but with much more feeling than before, as though she were fading back to a memory. Rémi was about to speak up when she continued, "They shot them. With guns. And rockets. And bombs. They blew up my mommy and blew up my daddy. They went everywhere." Erina breathed in heavily to compose herself and played with her hands.
From the silence, Rémi asked a vital question with an obvious answer, "Is that why the noise freaked you out so much? Because of...the bad men?" But the child simply blinked and shook her head slowly. "I don't like to remember that day, really. Too much red." She sank in between her knees again but this time the woman did not object to it. The girl deserved a moment of reprieve from the horrors she was asked to relive. But there was something that Rémi was curious about that did not match the nightmare the child recalled. With caution, she asked, "Erina, sweetheart? With mommy and daddy gone...how do you smile?" It was at that moment Rémi knew that she messed up. The question was overly insensitive especially after the heart wrenching tale she just heard. And she would have apologized immediately after she said it if it wasn't for Erina's giggling and cheeky grin.
"Hehe, I smile. And I laugh. Because it was the last thing daddy wanted to see, the last thing of me that he would remember." Her giggling turned into a boisterous guffaw, echoing through the lonely rusty warehouse that sheltered from the cold night. It would have been comforting had Rémi not felt so disturbed by the daugher's past. Even far more disturbing was the fact that Erina's eyes were leaking once more, tears welling up and spilling into the flames until the wisps died into a blackened pile of ashes with a handful of orange dots embedded in the remains. All the while she smiled and laughed, staring blankly into the void hoping for a father to see how 'happy' she was.
Her laughed died down until she was grinning at the darkness with wide, moistened eyes. "That's why I can't die, Missus. I need him to remember me. Anyone to remember. Always." Erina dropped her gaze into the pile of ash she put out with her sobbing and shut her eyes. Rémi watched her patiently, hardly moving an inch - not that she could. Seconds passed. Then minutes. Half an hour. Erina's eyes remained closed and Rémi watched her with whatever light remained in this defunct warehouse. Then, as if to remind the woman how late it was, the child fell back on the ground and rumbled with quite an adorable snore. She grinned warmly and wished the girl good night, though she would be unable to hear it in her dreams. As for herself, Rémi felt her body was off its rhythm as the absence of a sun and the arrival of a moon did nothing to exhaust her.
If I've been sleeping for almost three days, I'm bound to have fucked up my internal clock. Which means I can either sit here for another eight hours to get some shuteye or... She scanned around hoping to find what she needed. To the left was the same stupid puddle from before, to the right was a caved in wall with broken windows. She stretched her head behind and caught sight of just the thing she was looking for. In the back corner of Erina's little kitchen were large buckets filled to the brim with scrap metal parts. I think it's about time we get this body back in shape.
In the hours of the night that followed, the warehouse was filled with the noisy and repulsive grunts of a sweaty and persistent woman getting back on her feet. And in the final hour where the dawn transformed to morning, the clang and pang of steel rang true in the frigid air.
The next morning...
Little Erina snuggled inside her white coat with a warm smile for it had been the first piece of comfort the girl experienced in two years. She rubbed her cheeks against the inside and smelled the cloth, sea salt and gun powder. Not quite the scent she was looking for. The girl then rubbed her eyes and sat up only to notice her peculiar friend had vanished from her sitting spot. "Missus? Where did you go?" Erina searched around from her makeshift bed until she turned and saw the aforementioned maiden lying on the ground with jaw agape and a bubble ballooning from her nose. The child chuckled at the sight of her guardian asleep in such a comedic way.
She crawled on her knees quietly and soon found herself face to face with the dozing damsel. Erina smiled and put her hands in a cone in front of her mouth, "Good morning, sleepyhead!"
At once, Rémi's killer instincts kicked in and with the popping of her snot bubble came an unmistakable fury in the form of her fist, rising into the air so swiftly that the bangs on Erina's forehead flew upward. The child sat with eyes wide open and was left speechless. Her protector on the other hand gathered a few seconds to recompose herself and sat back up with a large yawn. She turned to see the child scared stiff from the power of her single punch and laughed. Her hand went to pat the daughter's head reassuringly as she had done to comfort her before. "Aw, did I scare you? Hah, you're okay. Just - old habits die hard." The two laughed together in the emptiness of the warehouse and eventually made their way into the station at the back.
"So what were you thinking for breakfast?" As she passed by the shelves of rations that Erina collected over her two years alone, Rémi couldn't help but grimace at the lack of variety in the collection. There were clearly expired cans of broth, beans, mushroom soup, things that would typically taste fine if they were served under proper conditions but more than half of the lids were broken in and already leaked a scent that smelled of something putrid she could not bear to say. They traveled further back and found a refrigerator tucked into a dark dusty corner. Rat pellets and spider webs decorated both sides of the cooling unit; an unpleasant introduction to a food storage facility.
But Erina pulled open the door and revealed, to Rémi's surprise, a hefty assortment of meats, cheeses, breads and beverages. What on earth was she doing eating garbage in cans when she was fully stocked with these amazing ingredients in pristine condition? Curious, the guest dug her gluttonous fingers into the fridge and pulled out a whole ham, uneaten and still wrapped. Her mouth began to water and a sparkle in her eyes gave away how desperately she wished to swallow the meat whole but one look down at the bewildered babe and Rémi returned to her senses. "It's a good stash, ahem. But why don't you touch this stuff? That shi- er - food back there is kinda rancid."
Erina pouted and sighed. "I know it's nasty. But eating nice things reminds me bad things. About my mommy and daddy." She closed the fridge door and walked away, leaving her tall friend to stand watch over the storage unit. Rémi watched as the girl grabbed a can of brown vegetable broth and black canned tomatoes and could only wonder just how badly she'd been eating for the past two years. Her eyes returned to the fridge door and she began to think. I need fuel to get my body back in shape but I can't eat this all by myself. There's gotta be a way... She opened the fridge and peered inside for a closer inspection. Aside from the ham, she saw bacon, chicken thighs, cheddar, parmesan, swiss, white bread, rye and sourdough. Three for each kind. Hmm. If she lived so fancy, then I can guess she's never had an old fashioned sammich. The lightbulb clicked and Rémi grinned to herself. They would be eating well tonight. But before she or the child could get a proper munching, they'd have to earn it. It was time to get the ol' engine roaring back again.
Rémi shut the door and returned to the newly rekindled bonfire - post-sobbing. Erina had in her skillet the chunky bits of canned tomatoes stewing in a vegetable broth. She had apparently grabbed some beans along the way and mushed them into a thick paste to mix with the tomatoes. Rémi felt like gagging just at the sight of it. But she refrained from doing so and poked her little friend to offer a proposal. Erina turned her pretty head and smiled at her protector. "Hm? Yes, Missus?"
The gray eyed guardian stared intently into the hues of her small companion, setting her up for the seriousness of what she had to say. Erina understood immediately and took her skillet off the flames before facing Rémi with a stern look. The woman gave a small smile and asked, "Are there any heavy weights around here?"
Intrigued, Erina shook her head but stopped midway when she put a finger to her chin and pondered for a few seconds. Her eyes brightened up and she looked back up at the woman. "Oh! This place was a construction factory! I think you could find some heavy blocks!" She smiled so warmly that it felt like the morning was radiating from her teeth. Rémi nodded and pat her head then rose up to stare into the far corners of the warehouse. "Good, I've been dying for a workout. And I think you could use some exercise too, Twigs." The word exercise confused the poor skinny girl and she tugged at the pants of her guardian. "What is exercise?" she asked so innocently, with her stick-like arms pulling at the woman's shorts. Rémi grinned and rolled up her sleeves, revealing her bulging biceps. She rose them to her face and flexed until the veins in her arms popped out with high definition. The child jumped back in surprise and giggled uncontrollably, probably from remembering the hero who saved her under the concrete wall.
The pink haired warrior smiled as she boasted, "What is exercise? Exercise is a lifestyle. It's hard work. But if you're strong enough to see it through," She breathed in and posed with a dynamic angle, fully displaying the physique she built. "You can become anything." The little Erina stared starstruck with twinkles in her pupils and drool pouring from the corners of her lips. Rémi laughed and pat the child's hair yet again. "So what do you say, little Erina? Are you willing?" She could hardly get her hand off the runt's head before the kid shot a fist into the air with determination unlike anything she'd ever seen from her. Rémi's eyes opened wide. Erina smiled with two little beads in the corners of her eyes. "I am!...I want to become stronger!" The guardian smirked and nodded. They were ready.
The search for sufficient weights was extremely easy given that the warehouse was an old concrete factory. Whatever the reason for them leaving did not matter as their abandonment of the facility left behind a good number of various weights measured in stone. The smallest unit was a brick, no bigger than the woman's foot and light enough that Erina could lift it with one hand. Rémi gauged that it weighed roughly 8 pounds and guessed it would serve as a proper beginning weight for the child; but it would do nothing in the way of progress for the hardened fighter. She would require greater weight.
They walked through a gallery of stonework, possibly left behind as samples or templates for the stone project. The first was the brick, the second was a cinderblock, and the third was a solid gray cube about half of the woman's height and equally measured on all sides. This was the one, she thought to herself. Rémi bent down and clutched the bottommost surface of the block and pulled. It scratched against the floor as she brought it up from the dirt but eventually it rose up several inches into the air.
"Whoa!!" Erina cried out with shock. The square boulder floated off the ground tucked in the bosom of the lady Dermott, whose red face and bulging eyes gave away just how heavy it was. Her fingertips went whiter than snow and Erina's joyful surprise melted to concern. "Mi-Missus? Are you ok-" Before the last word could be spoken, Rémi let out a ghastly sigh and the block dropped to the ground with a solid thud, knocking up a plume of dust at their feet. The both of them coughed up a fit but only the woman laughed in between the violent discharges. "Ha ha ha!"
"Ach ahach! Why are you laughing, Missus?" Poor tiny Erina rubbed her eyes in retaliation of the kicked up dirt in her face. Only a short moment after when the dust had finally settled, she opened her eyes and saw her guardian stand tall above her with the sunlight shining from behind, lighting up her silhouette. Her jaw gaped wide with wonder. And Rémi peered down at her pupil with a confident smile. She pointed to the cinderblock adjacent to their booth and said, "Starting today, that is your workload." Erina stared at the massive block of concrete that awaited her test of strength. She felt herself already beginning to sweat. The girl faced her teacher immediately with a sorrowful look on her face, "B-but I can carry the first one! Shouldn't that be my workload?"
But her master gestured two fingers at her lips, signaling for the young apprentice to behave herself and remain silent. Rémi then took those two fingers and pointed down at the cube that gave her a challenge to merely lift for a few seconds. She brought a thumb and aimed it at herself, "And as for myself, this will be my workload." Erina let out a perplexed sound that was neither of human nor creature. "B-but you can barely lift it, Missus. Shouldn't we do it easy first and then-"
BOOM!
A sudden stomp from the fiery haired woman put an end to the child's begging. She pouted her lips and awaited further instruction. Rémi put on a more serious expression and stared harshly into her student's eyes. "In this world, easy gets you nowhere. Sure, a few years of taking it easy and you might see yourself grow. But a few days of hell and you can become greater than you can possibly imagine." She flexed her arms yet again in a show of power and watched her pupil beam with inspiration. Her face shifted to a cheeky grin, "Now let's get to work."
-Day 1-
The exhaustion set in quick for little Erina. She was an energetic thing, swift as a river from the day she first chased the damn rascal. But her limbs were frail, as her nickname Twigs implied. Within two minutes of her sets, she was already starting to slow down and breathe heavily. Her arms shook violently with each ascent they made and her tiny hands went whiter than powdered sugar from gripping so tightly to the coarse stone blocks. Yet she kept on pushing, eyes focused on the horizon without ever dropping down in doubt of herself. Rémi smiled and knew that she would not give up so easily. But now the matter of her own workout was at hand. The final block was drilled and she was ready to begin.
Rémi grabbed a handful of sediment powder, probably a cement formula yet to be used. She rubbed her hands with the dust as they would prevent the bar from slipping out of her hands; she'd been through this before but traditionally used chalk instead. She took one last look at her student heaving the 20-something pound bricks up to her shoulder, down her chest then to her sides and back up again. The sight of this weak, tiny and scared little girl growing stronger in mere minutes gave her hope for herself. Her gray eyes then glanced at her sides to see gray cubes neatly skewered to resemble a makeshift weightlifting bar. At her current strength, she would only dare to lift two and would move on from there if successful. She took her footing and gripped the bar tightly, pulling only slightly to get a feel for how heavy the blocks were. They did not budge an inch. The brawny lady breathed in deeply to prepare and she braced her legs for the inevitable collapse. It's show time. Her palms tightened, her back tensed and her legs swelled all at once. The gray cubes flew off the ground in a hurry and locked into place right beside her crimson tinted face.
Fuck. Fuck. This fucking sucks, dude. But she held those damned blocks and that infernal bar on top of her shoulders. The iron dug into her tissue and rolled against the bone. Her spine rattled and creaked from every pound that pushed against it. But she held. Her thighs vibrated to the frequency of a hummingbird, nearly imperceptible yet violently tumultuous. They were ringing the song of pain and struggle. But she held. Through sheer will and determination, Rémi sucked in whatever she could manage through puckered lips as red as the ripest strawberry. Her chest rose with the gust of fresh air. Blood boiled in her face like it was a kettle and her ears glowed with a scarlet ambience as the sun shone through them. But still, she held.
"Hrrggg..." was all the grunting she could muster in that vulnerable state. As she stood now, the master was nothing more than a statue frozen in place with the weight of the earth atop her, hoping to sink back to its mother and away from this sweaty barbarian. The woman understood if she remained in such a pose, there would be no progress, only pain. She breathed in once more, however much it hurt her to do so. With newly reaped breath, Rémi dug deep inside herself and flexed her arms and shoulders to perform the impossible. Her thighs braced themselves to push. The girl took one final breath of caution and screamed at the top of her lungs as she raised the bar above her head, "AHHHHHH!!!!!!" The sudden explosion startled the young Erina who had already reached her tenth set and was drenched from head to toe. She promptly dropped the cinderblocks to her feet and fell to her bottom at the sound of her guardian in so much pain.
Numerous veins all lining the exterior of Rémi's neck shot up to her blood-red scowl, fueling the woman's scarlet skin. She bared her fangs and squinted her eyes, quaking all over her body while doing so. From a glance, the lady resembled demon more than woman and could easily pass as such with how hideous she seethed and foamed at the mouth. Young Erina watched on with shock and covered her mouth so as not to disturb this session of hell with her tiny but noticeable gasps of horrors.
The guardian warrior's mind felt blank while she held the bar above her head. All the thoughts that traveled on her locomotive of contemplation jumped overboard when the rails grew infernally hot and the incessant ringing of a kettle played in her ears. She was blind at the moment, unable to open her eyes as the skin of her face felt tighter than a straitjacket on a sumo wrestler. Yet somehow, she still held. Or so it seemed. Without warning, Rémi felt a jolt of panic run up her spine when the shaking in her legs evolved to a whole new state of numbness. Not numbness in the sense she was free of the agony within but that the signals she sent commanding them to move were not getting across. She did not need her eyes to know that the horizon was lowering; her legs were collapsing and she was about to fall. No...you...fucking...DON'T!!
Her front knee was the first to give in but before it could bow completely to the power of the earth, the brawny brute released her other leg and kneeled to keep herself composed. The gravity of her descent and shift of focus to her legs then severed her strength from her arms and the weight of the stone blocks came crashing down on her back with a mighty thud. Now she found herself in a predicament beyond the lifting of a heavy weight.
"Missus!" To the side, she could hear little Erina rushing to her aid but instinct prevailed and the proud, burly dame shouted despite her extreme situation, "GET BACK! DO NOT HELP ME IN ANY WAY! THIS IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO DO ON MY OWN!" And so the child reluctantly came to a halt and dropped to a squat with her fingers veiling her slack jawed pout. She whimpered like a sobbing infant and Rémi knew she could not allow her pupil to see her this way. Her teeth opened passage for a new burst of wind to awaken her spirit. She tightly gripped the bar with her sediment coated fingers. The girl thanked her lucky stars she was clever enough to remember such safety precautions.
But now was no time to be congratulating her foresight, now was the time for action. Rémi controlled her breathing and tested her front leg to see how much load she could bear and began to groan when the fibers in her thigh felt they were ripping apart. It's all for progress. she told herself but the pain only served to remind her of that fateful day she nearly died protecting the young girl. How her bones cracked and shattered under such an immense burden. But she was no quitter, she had faced better men with greater strength and could not be so easily beaten by a pair of lowly concrete dice. This was no game and she was no player. It was a trial and she was the defendant. Win or die, this was the final test.
Rémilia opened her eyes and saw the desperate face of her pupil, crying and sobbing with fear. And in that instance of bliss, where the pain subsided and she could only feel her duties of a guardian shining through, she smiled at Erina and gave her a thumbs up on both hands. The kid gasped with awe. And Rémi dug deep once more.
Her thighs bulged and ballooned to almost twice their size, at an inhuman scale that felt unnatural even for someone as brawny as her. Her red skin had now ignited into an excruciating violet as the veins in her eyes crawled out from their sockets like bloody bolts of lightning. She suppressed scream after scream with her tightly shut mouth and truly appeared as though she were ready to explode. One final look she gave to her trainee and the woman felt no fear any longer, she breathed. And she let go.
With one swift movement, Rémi danced from a knelt prisoner to a triumphant champion, iron bar overhead, both stones at her side with the trail of dust still flying upwards from the momentum of her ascent. Her lift could only be described as a rocket, rapid and explosive. In her proud stance, she let out a victorious roar that echoed through the warehouse and far into the slums of the city,
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"
Erina simply sat and marveled, with eyes glowing and mouth wide open. The conqueror of the stone trial threw down her challenger to the floor with a crash that shook the very earth they stood on. Rémi heaved sigh after sigh and looked to her student with a satisfied grin, she pointed to the weights and exhaled like a breeze, "Never take it easy." She smiled as wide as her cheeks would allow and fell on her back with outstretched arms.
About an hour later, she recovered from her slumber and awoke to the sight of Erina massaging her worked out muscles. The two made eye contact and laughed with a camaraderie as though they had known each other for years. Rémi then decided that now was the time to see if the girl was ready. "For dinner tonight." Her voice caught the student's attention and she listened dutifully to her master's next words. "I'll be cooking from what's in the fridge tonight, but it won't be something you'd have before." She sensed that spark of uncertainty on Erina's face when mentioning the refrigerator but pressed on persistently. "If it doesn't remind you of your mommy and daddy, will you please try it?" A few seconds of silence passed by before the child gave her answer in the form of a smile and two cheery eyes, "I can try!" It was hesitant but good enough for Dermott. So with that accord, she sat back with eyes closed and napped as her apprentice soothed the soreness of her broken body. Tonight, they would dine, dine better than they had for a long time.
-Night 1-
The moon hung over the empty abandoned warehouse, glowing on a dark blue backdrop. In their lonely domain, Erina sat in front of the bonfire with one hand outstretched and the other massaging her arms. She had gone above and beyond after her master's routine and performed double the number of sets she was assigned. Now her tissue fibers felt like gelatin; but deep inside she was happy. She looked off to her station where Rémi was preparing a special surprise for their first actual dinner together. Real food, the master joked, would be on the menu for the first time in two years. Erina wondered just how it would taste after all this time.
A short moment later, the woman arrived with two tin plates in hand and a smile on her face. "Well, Twigs, you gave me quite the showing today. Two hundred reps on your first try! Not bad at all." The comment garnered a blush from her student who tried to laugh it off. She was probably not used to compliments given her condition. Rémi placed their plates down at both of their feet and revealed her creation: a grilled ham sandwich with melted swiss cheese. Erina raised a brow as expected; a high class daughter such as herself most likely indulged in lobster and steak with her parents and not the food of the peasantry.
The child held the square container of meat and dairy in her fingers then eyed it suspiciously. "What is it, Missus?" The woman chuckled honestly and playfully punched her pupil's arm. "That my dear student, is a sandwich." Erina looked back at the breaded vessel with even greater confusion. "But there's no sand! And no witch!" Rémi laughed boisterously, slapping her knee as she did so. The child was so pure of the harsher world that it reminded the hardened warrior of a simpler time - a childhood when pirates, Marines, and fighting didn't matter. She reassured the kid by taking a bite out of her own sandwich and giving a thumbs up, "See! It's perfectly fine!"
Reluctantly, little Erina opened her mouth and munched down her teeth on the bread with a satisfying crunch, audibly gnawing through the ham like butter and dripping the cheesy oils down her chin. It was then that two streams of tears fell down her cheeks and rolled off her tiny fingers. Rémi was taken aback. "Whoa, hey. Do you not like it? I-I can make you something else if you-" But the child could not wait for her master to complete speaking. She shredded through the sammich with ferocity and speed that would leave the most ravenous predators shaking in their boots. Erina gulped down her last bite and began to sob into the flames as she had the night before. Her teary eyes looked up at the speechless face of the lady Dermott and through sniffles and snot she let out in a soft whimper, "That was the best thing I ever had." Rémi gasped ever so silently and deep in her heart, she felt it skip a beat. In the corner of her own gray eye, the faintest bit of moisture creeped out for a moment. She smiled at her precious friend and whispered back, "Thank you for enjoying it." But before Rémi could bring her own sandwich to her mouth, she paused and looked into Erina's eyes. She saw her reflection, the woman she was and the woman that Erina looked up to. She put the sandwich down and pushed the plate to her trainee. "Wha-but Missus!?"
Rémi stood up and walked to the back station and turned around with a wide grin. "It's okay. You earned it. I'll go make another." She departed for the fridge and left the speechless student to sob in a puddle of her making. Without hesitation, she ate into her second meal with unsuppressed joy as the tears soaked every bite of bread she devoured. In the darkness of the kitchen, where the proud woman cooked, one could've sworn they saw her sniffle and wipe her face all with a bright, white grin gleaming from the flames.
That night, the two slumbered with their bellies full and satisfied, one of which had not done so in two long years. They dreamed in the warmth of the fire, under the stars. But the hardest work was yet to come for this night was only the beginning.
For the next few days, they trained as hard if not harder than that first day of agony. The girl's workload quadrupled in weight while the woman aimed to be able to lift her load with ease. Every day they pushed themselves with a different workout to target specific areas.
On the second day, the girl was tasked with two laps around the entire warehouse, all while holding four blocks. She opted to run those laps with only lunges. The master smiled at the challenge. Meanwhile, the elder wrapped two of her large bricks with thick ropes and hoisted them onto her back. Her goal was to travel from one end of the warehouse to the other without her hands ever touching the ground for rest.
After a few hours passed, the girl was finally within the final stretch of her lap. She was soaked in sweat and her hair dripped with every heaving breath she took in. For the woman, it was a mirror image. Her fiery pink hair was doused in perspiration and the trail her blocks left behind had turned to mud from the water she dripped along the way. Both inched closer to their goals and saw each other for a short glimpse. They exchanged exhausted but confident smiles at each other. They were progressing, growing stronger together. By the next half hour, the two collapsed beside each other against the cold, metal wall and sighed with relief. Their work for the day had been complete.
That night, each of them enjoyed two bacon cheddar sandwiches on rye and laughed heartily. Rémi noticed that Erina was already looking bulkier today than the day the she met her. But more importantly, the child laughed and smiled of her own accord. The kid even cracked jokes. She was no longer that timid girl; she was growing not only in body but in spirit.
On the third day, Twigs was given a sturdy wooden board and asked to lay on her back. Rémi then placed eight cinderblocks on the plank and told her pupil to push the weight up and down until she could launch it out of a hole in the roof. For the teacher, she discovered a net that was used for lifting multiple loads all at once. She found a pulley system attached to it and began to supply her net with weight. Meanwhile, during her construction, she saw Erina pressing the plank and testing her strength. On the first attempt, she could only launch the board a few feet from her face. The blocks scattered and she collected them to try again. On the second attempt, she gained a story in height but was still twenty feet shy. Rémi smiled regardless of the failure for she was proud that her student put her best in every attempt.
Once the net was ready, the woman challenged herself to pull the weight all the way to the roof. Much like her student, her progress was slow. She was able to begin with a burst of strength and made it to a story but slowed down as the day passed. Rémi struggled for an hour, using her arms and back to raise the net further above the ground. Once in a while, she would slip and the rope would come tumbling down and forced her to restart her progress all over again. In the background, the morning sun traveled across the sky and rode the clouds until it arrived into the early evening. The azure roof was now a brilliant orange yet the two warehouse workers were still incomplete with their tasks.
Erina had adjusted her spot as the sweat that accumulated from her persistence had created a pond which muddied her clothing and kept her distracted. She moved closer to her master but was now forced to face the metal ceiling as an addition to her challenge. The little girl began work immediately and pressed the board forward, catapulting the cinderblocks now within inches of the upper border. Her master was also hard at work, locked into place with the rope tightly secured around her chest to gain some leverage. By some stroke of luck, she found a thin layer of dry concrete dust still covering the upper floor of her level and applied it to her hands to maximize the grip. Rémi inhaled until her bosom ballooned to double its girth. The sky was turning into a shade of violet. The harbinger of night was approaching faster than expected. She had to complete her challenge or it would be failure for her and her pupil.
The woman huffed and puffed, bulging her legs so they would be planted firmly into the floor. Her triceps convulsed, clearly nearing their limit as they had been tested for hours now, constantly pulling the weight of this incredible load. She braced herself for one final pull and breathed in. But just before the master could execute her duties, eight silver blurs rushed past her from below and struck the rusted ceiling with such velocity that they erupted into an explosion of dust and shards. Rémi widened her eyes, could it be? She looked down with curiosity and saw her young Erina, smiling with eyes squinting, happier than she'd ever seen her before. She did it...she actually fucking did it. A smirk infected the master's face and she looked toward her own goal with confidence renewed. It was now or never. She gathered all her might into her arms and back and screamed loudly as she pulled the net skyrocketing to the roof. In one swift motion, the net of stone blocks zoomed so hard and so fast that the pulley she used to carry them snapped and sent the whole load bursting through the roof and showering the warehouse with a hundred shattered bricks. Rémi fell down from her platform and landed on the ground with a triumphant kneel. She came face to face with little Erina who crossed her arms with a pleased smile, "You're too slow~" The teacher flicked her student in the nose and laughed hysterically.
That night, each of them enjoyed three portions of chicken parmesan with a loaf of sourdough to complete it. Rémi watched the once cowardly child now eat her food with an animalistic pace, wolfing down her meals like they were her last ones on the planet. She could no longer be called a tiny girl, not anymore. As Rémi saw her, Erina was already growing bigger and heavier. Her stick-like arms and legs had become sturdy packages of protein and power. And a thought occurred to her. Maybe...just maybe...we're ready for the next step. Rémi glanced to the gallery of stonework and saw a fourth block that they had not passed for its size was too immense at the time of the choosing. But now, the master was stronger than ever, as well as her apprentice. Yet Rémi knew that such progress was nothing to rush.
On the fourth day, she mainly chose to use it to rest and replenish their strength but also to prepare for the final day of exercise. During the early morning, when it was darkest and least inhabited, the two went out in search of something: the tallest tower they could find. Rémi's plan for their final day was simple. Instead of separated tasks, they would do this one together. They would tie their new workloads, heavier than they were used to, and scale the tallest structure around until they reached the peak. It would be a perilous challenge. For failure at a certain point would mean their inevitable fall to death.
The two scouted for hours until the afternoon and decided on a location, another abandoned factory only two blocks out from theirs. They found a cart in their warehouse and used it to transport the blocks to their desired spot. Tomorrow they would see just how much progress was made. But for the rest of the day, they ate and enjoyed their rest. For the ultimate challenge was just around the corner...
On the final day, the two traveled at the crack of dawn and made their way to the base of the 'mountain'. They stood and looked skyward, piercing the black smog that polluted the city and seeing the peak of the tower in the distance. Erina breathed out with a large exhale and turned to her master with a small grin. "So this is it, Missus?"
Rémilia stood proud and gazed to the heavens, taking it all in. She spoke calmly, "Yes. This will be it. And when we are done here, my body will be back in shape." The early morning was silent and cold but even with the two lively ladies standing at the base, the silence went uninterrupted. Erina spoke up once more but with a hint of uncertainty in her voice, "Well yes, Missus. But...what after? What about us?" For a split second, the fearless apprentice wavered. Because after all these days, they had never addressed the biggest question: what do they do with all this progress? Rémi's eyes looked away from the heavens and returned to the earth where she saw her student at unease. She extended her hand to hers and answered with a whisper, "Join me at the top, and we'll find out together." And without warning, the master sprinted to the factory wall with rope in her hand secured tightly around her chest.
The ultimate block she chose to carry sat in the cart beside them and was ready for deployment. Rémi carried two thick iron rods that she sharpened and curved at the ends; they would be her scaling tools for the journey. All the meanwhile, Erina stood behind her, still silent and frozen in place. Her mind was probably racing with questions but the guardian warrior had no time to worry, this was her final test and she would conquer it like always. She leaped into the air and pierced the metal walls with her hooks, landing about a story above the ground. One look behind and she could see the ultimate block trailing behind on loose rope. She would feel the pain in a few more feet, that was for sure. But to her surprise, when she scanned the ground, there was no Erina. "What the fu-...Kid? Where'd you go? I swear if you bailed I am going to beat your little a-"
From out of nowhere, the ringing of metal piercing metal screeched to the side of her. Rémi cringed from the sudden shock and stared viciously at the origin when her face immediately shifted to one of sheer astonishment. Young Erina, with a bundle of ropes tying her to the very same block that nearly crushed the guardian on their first day, was hanging a foot above her with the most cheeky grin on her face. "Who will join whom at the top?~" Rémi smirked and shot daggers with her eyes at the rude little pupil. "You snot nosed brat, when I climb up there, you're in a world of hurt!!" But the student laughed and continued her ascent before giving one last look to her master, "Then you'd best catch me, Missus Slowpoke!"
The brawny damsel accepted the challenge and pushed forth with the advance when only a few hooks in, the weight began to collapse. Rémi felt the rope on her back dig so painfully deep that it felt more like a shovel carving her. But this was just the beginning and they had such a distance to cover. She sucked it up and heaved. Her hand vibrated just to dig the hook out of the wall and her whole body spasmed just maintaining the minimal height they were at now. By the time she had managed to hook the rod just a few inches above, Rémi already observed Erina pushing to the sky with relative ease. They grow up so fast... But she lay the sentiment away while her problem remained. The ultimate block lived up to its name. And though the woman was unsure how she'd manage to carry it to the top, one thing was certain: failure was not an option. The other hand dug the hook out from the wall and soared slightly skyward. Rémi looked down - one foot since her leap. There would be so many more.
They started at the crack of dawn when the sun was only an infant and climbed that tower with the earth pulling them down. Several hours passed and by the afternoon, they were in the cloud of smog that polluted the city and to no surprise it impeded their progress tremendously. The woman used her collar to vent out any toxic gas she could but she heard violent coughs coming from the direction of her protege. Don't give up now, Erina...Not when you've come so far. But it was far easier to speak than to act. Rémi was in quite a predicament herself. She managed to find a ledge on the upper walls of the factory that she used to recover some of her upper body strength. The trek had involved almost all of her back and arms yet a second's glance at the peak and she could see it so close to her. However, she needed time to rest and was worried if her student was wise enough to utilize her resources.
The coughing continued and Rémi's worry escalated beyond slight concern. She felt tempted to cry out and encourage her. But it would have been wrong; only children needed words to motivate them. She had to act to show her student the way. Her eyes sparkled even within the cloud of darkness.
Her rejuvenated hands tightened around the hooks again and she pulled herself bound for the summit. The ultimate block swayed in the wind and its ropes scarred her back tissue as she move further up the 'mountain'. But she had to get to her apprentice. There was no other thing she could think about. Rémi growled as she breathed in a deep breath. "Grr...RAGH!" The pink beast dashed upward the wall like a maniac, using her hooks to propel her body forward with every step. She could feel the breeze of smog clearing before her face and just a few feet away, she saw the daughter's face buried deep in the wall and coughing nonstop.
"ERINA!" The master cried out. Her feet began to shake as the adrenaline started to deplete from the brawny buxom creature. She saw the poor girl watching her scale the tower on foot and stared in awe even through loss of breath. Rémi swore she saw her little fingers grip so tightly around her hooks. And a grin emerged among the smog, fully aware that this day was theirs.
The pink crowned guardian forwent her footing and held onto her hooks with a massive gust entering her lungs. Her protege dug her nose into her collar and did the same. They hung off the factory wall side by side and together they nodded in agreement that this was the final push. On the count of three, they gave it their all. Their muscles twitched and the two made for a last-ditch effort by skyrocketing to the summit. Feminine bodies soared up the metal cliffs of the abandoned factory walls and arced their ascent until they came crashing down to the platform with a most satisfying thud.
Erina vented and sighed with ecstasy and relief, laughing hysterically that this test had truly been bested. Her master kneeled trying to catch her breath but did not succeed at hiding her smug and joyful face. Rémi watched her student laugh and smile so happily that it warmed her own heart to see a young face as full of life like hers. Especially after the two years she spent living in misery. She was proud and knew she earned it. The master stood up to offer a hand for her protege when an odd thing entered her sight. Erina's face developed a darker shade, then a zone around her body and soon she was encapsulated within a section of shadow. What did this mean?-
Rémi felt time stop in that very moment. The ropes on her back were no longer heavy. They were not pulling her down. They were pulling her up. She did not have time to turn around, she simply knelt to take her cackling student's body into her own and punched the sky with all the might she had left.
The ultimate block split apart against the lady Dermott's mountainous fist and fell back to its beloved earth in twin pieces. Rémi let out a weak laugh and fell to the floor in a slump. She felt her eyes sinking as strength faded from her body. The summit had been conquered but she had not expected the trial to challenge her so blatantly in a secret two-parter. The master gazed at the heavens with its midday star shining down on the two of them. She felt a pair of hands forcefully shaking her. Her student. Of course, how foolish she was to forget the reason they came this far.
Her voice cried out to her so desperately and pitifully, it made her smile even more. "Please Missus! Get up! Please! You have to tell me what's next! You promised!!" Those tiny fingers did everything they could get a rise out of her. And all Rémi could do was cough out a laugh or two. Until she heard that most familiar tip tap of water coming from her right.
"Please...Missus Dermott. I need you...Please."
Rémi's coughing ceased and she turned to meet her sniveling little baby. She brought a finger to the girl's chin and it startled her so. Her eyes were wet and they glowed so brightly in the sunlight. Rémi grinned and despite her condition, spoke with the authority of a true master, "Are you stronger?"
Erina nodded uncontrollably without hesitation and wiped away her tears while doing so. The woman chuckled and brushed her hand against the girl's hair, like a mother would for her daughter. She whispered gently to force the girl to come in close and listen. And when the winds settled and the tears had ceased, she said it.
The moon hung over the empty abandoned warehouse, glowing on a dark blue backdrop. In their lonely domain, Erina sat in front of the bonfire with one hand outstretched and the other massaging her arms. She had gone above and beyond after her master's routine and performed double the number of sets she was assigned. Now her tissue fibers felt like gelatin; but deep inside she was happy. She looked off to her station where Rémi was preparing a special surprise for their first actual dinner together. Real food, the master joked, would be on the menu for the first time in two years. Erina wondered just how it would taste after all this time.
A short moment later, the woman arrived with two tin plates in hand and a smile on her face. "Well, Twigs, you gave me quite the showing today. Two hundred reps on your first try! Not bad at all." The comment garnered a blush from her student who tried to laugh it off. She was probably not used to compliments given her condition. Rémi placed their plates down at both of their feet and revealed her creation: a grilled ham sandwich with melted swiss cheese. Erina raised a brow as expected; a high class daughter such as herself most likely indulged in lobster and steak with her parents and not the food of the peasantry.
The child held the square container of meat and dairy in her fingers then eyed it suspiciously. "What is it, Missus?" The woman chuckled honestly and playfully punched her pupil's arm. "That my dear student, is a sandwich." Erina looked back at the breaded vessel with even greater confusion. "But there's no sand! And no witch!" Rémi laughed boisterously, slapping her knee as she did so. The child was so pure of the harsher world that it reminded the hardened warrior of a simpler time - a childhood when pirates, Marines, and fighting didn't matter. She reassured the kid by taking a bite out of her own sandwich and giving a thumbs up, "See! It's perfectly fine!"
Reluctantly, little Erina opened her mouth and munched down her teeth on the bread with a satisfying crunch, audibly gnawing through the ham like butter and dripping the cheesy oils down her chin. It was then that two streams of tears fell down her cheeks and rolled off her tiny fingers. Rémi was taken aback. "Whoa, hey. Do you not like it? I-I can make you something else if you-" But the child could not wait for her master to complete speaking. She shredded through the sammich with ferocity and speed that would leave the most ravenous predators shaking in their boots. Erina gulped down her last bite and began to sob into the flames as she had the night before. Her teary eyes looked up at the speechless face of the lady Dermott and through sniffles and snot she let out in a soft whimper, "That was the best thing I ever had." Rémi gasped ever so silently and deep in her heart, she felt it skip a beat. In the corner of her own gray eye, the faintest bit of moisture creeped out for a moment. She smiled at her precious friend and whispered back, "Thank you for enjoying it." But before Rémi could bring her own sandwich to her mouth, she paused and looked into Erina's eyes. She saw her reflection, the woman she was and the woman that Erina looked up to. She put the sandwich down and pushed the plate to her trainee. "Wha-but Missus!?"
Rémi stood up and walked to the back station and turned around with a wide grin. "It's okay. You earned it. I'll go make another." She departed for the fridge and left the speechless student to sob in a puddle of her making. Without hesitation, she ate into her second meal with unsuppressed joy as the tears soaked every bite of bread she devoured. In the darkness of the kitchen, where the proud woman cooked, one could've sworn they saw her sniffle and wipe her face all with a bright, white grin gleaming from the flames.
That night, the two slumbered with their bellies full and satisfied, one of which had not done so in two long years. They dreamed in the warmth of the fire, under the stars. But the hardest work was yet to come for this night was only the beginning.
For the next few days, they trained as hard if not harder than that first day of agony. The girl's workload quadrupled in weight while the woman aimed to be able to lift her load with ease. Every day they pushed themselves with a different workout to target specific areas.
On the second day, the girl was tasked with two laps around the entire warehouse, all while holding four blocks. She opted to run those laps with only lunges. The master smiled at the challenge. Meanwhile, the elder wrapped two of her large bricks with thick ropes and hoisted them onto her back. Her goal was to travel from one end of the warehouse to the other without her hands ever touching the ground for rest.
After a few hours passed, the girl was finally within the final stretch of her lap. She was soaked in sweat and her hair dripped with every heaving breath she took in. For the woman, it was a mirror image. Her fiery pink hair was doused in perspiration and the trail her blocks left behind had turned to mud from the water she dripped along the way. Both inched closer to their goals and saw each other for a short glimpse. They exchanged exhausted but confident smiles at each other. They were progressing, growing stronger together. By the next half hour, the two collapsed beside each other against the cold, metal wall and sighed with relief. Their work for the day had been complete.
That night, each of them enjoyed two bacon cheddar sandwiches on rye and laughed heartily. Rémi noticed that Erina was already looking bulkier today than the day the she met her. But more importantly, the child laughed and smiled of her own accord. The kid even cracked jokes. She was no longer that timid girl; she was growing not only in body but in spirit.
On the third day, Twigs was given a sturdy wooden board and asked to lay on her back. Rémi then placed eight cinderblocks on the plank and told her pupil to push the weight up and down until she could launch it out of a hole in the roof. For the teacher, she discovered a net that was used for lifting multiple loads all at once. She found a pulley system attached to it and began to supply her net with weight. Meanwhile, during her construction, she saw Erina pressing the plank and testing her strength. On the first attempt, she could only launch the board a few feet from her face. The blocks scattered and she collected them to try again. On the second attempt, she gained a story in height but was still twenty feet shy. Rémi smiled regardless of the failure for she was proud that her student put her best in every attempt.
Once the net was ready, the woman challenged herself to pull the weight all the way to the roof. Much like her student, her progress was slow. She was able to begin with a burst of strength and made it to a story but slowed down as the day passed. Rémi struggled for an hour, using her arms and back to raise the net further above the ground. Once in a while, she would slip and the rope would come tumbling down and forced her to restart her progress all over again. In the background, the morning sun traveled across the sky and rode the clouds until it arrived into the early evening. The azure roof was now a brilliant orange yet the two warehouse workers were still incomplete with their tasks.
Erina had adjusted her spot as the sweat that accumulated from her persistence had created a pond which muddied her clothing and kept her distracted. She moved closer to her master but was now forced to face the metal ceiling as an addition to her challenge. The little girl began work immediately and pressed the board forward, catapulting the cinderblocks now within inches of the upper border. Her master was also hard at work, locked into place with the rope tightly secured around her chest to gain some leverage. By some stroke of luck, she found a thin layer of dry concrete dust still covering the upper floor of her level and applied it to her hands to maximize the grip. Rémi inhaled until her bosom ballooned to double its girth. The sky was turning into a shade of violet. The harbinger of night was approaching faster than expected. She had to complete her challenge or it would be failure for her and her pupil.
The woman huffed and puffed, bulging her legs so they would be planted firmly into the floor. Her triceps convulsed, clearly nearing their limit as they had been tested for hours now, constantly pulling the weight of this incredible load. She braced herself for one final pull and breathed in. But just before the master could execute her duties, eight silver blurs rushed past her from below and struck the rusted ceiling with such velocity that they erupted into an explosion of dust and shards. Rémi widened her eyes, could it be? She looked down with curiosity and saw her young Erina, smiling with eyes squinting, happier than she'd ever seen her before. She did it...she actually fucking did it. A smirk infected the master's face and she looked toward her own goal with confidence renewed. It was now or never. She gathered all her might into her arms and back and screamed loudly as she pulled the net skyrocketing to the roof. In one swift motion, the net of stone blocks zoomed so hard and so fast that the pulley she used to carry them snapped and sent the whole load bursting through the roof and showering the warehouse with a hundred shattered bricks. Rémi fell down from her platform and landed on the ground with a triumphant kneel. She came face to face with little Erina who crossed her arms with a pleased smile, "You're too slow~" The teacher flicked her student in the nose and laughed hysterically.
That night, each of them enjoyed three portions of chicken parmesan with a loaf of sourdough to complete it. Rémi watched the once cowardly child now eat her food with an animalistic pace, wolfing down her meals like they were her last ones on the planet. She could no longer be called a tiny girl, not anymore. As Rémi saw her, Erina was already growing bigger and heavier. Her stick-like arms and legs had become sturdy packages of protein and power. And a thought occurred to her. Maybe...just maybe...we're ready for the next step. Rémi glanced to the gallery of stonework and saw a fourth block that they had not passed for its size was too immense at the time of the choosing. But now, the master was stronger than ever, as well as her apprentice. Yet Rémi knew that such progress was nothing to rush.
On the fourth day, she mainly chose to use it to rest and replenish their strength but also to prepare for the final day of exercise. During the early morning, when it was darkest and least inhabited, the two went out in search of something: the tallest tower they could find. Rémi's plan for their final day was simple. Instead of separated tasks, they would do this one together. They would tie their new workloads, heavier than they were used to, and scale the tallest structure around until they reached the peak. It would be a perilous challenge. For failure at a certain point would mean their inevitable fall to death.
The two scouted for hours until the afternoon and decided on a location, another abandoned factory only two blocks out from theirs. They found a cart in their warehouse and used it to transport the blocks to their desired spot. Tomorrow they would see just how much progress was made. But for the rest of the day, they ate and enjoyed their rest. For the ultimate challenge was just around the corner...
On the final day, the two traveled at the crack of dawn and made their way to the base of the 'mountain'. They stood and looked skyward, piercing the black smog that polluted the city and seeing the peak of the tower in the distance. Erina breathed out with a large exhale and turned to her master with a small grin. "So this is it, Missus?"
Rémilia stood proud and gazed to the heavens, taking it all in. She spoke calmly, "Yes. This will be it. And when we are done here, my body will be back in shape." The early morning was silent and cold but even with the two lively ladies standing at the base, the silence went uninterrupted. Erina spoke up once more but with a hint of uncertainty in her voice, "Well yes, Missus. But...what after? What about us?" For a split second, the fearless apprentice wavered. Because after all these days, they had never addressed the biggest question: what do they do with all this progress? Rémi's eyes looked away from the heavens and returned to the earth where she saw her student at unease. She extended her hand to hers and answered with a whisper, "Join me at the top, and we'll find out together." And without warning, the master sprinted to the factory wall with rope in her hand secured tightly around her chest.
The ultimate block she chose to carry sat in the cart beside them and was ready for deployment. Rémi carried two thick iron rods that she sharpened and curved at the ends; they would be her scaling tools for the journey. All the meanwhile, Erina stood behind her, still silent and frozen in place. Her mind was probably racing with questions but the guardian warrior had no time to worry, this was her final test and she would conquer it like always. She leaped into the air and pierced the metal walls with her hooks, landing about a story above the ground. One look behind and she could see the ultimate block trailing behind on loose rope. She would feel the pain in a few more feet, that was for sure. But to her surprise, when she scanned the ground, there was no Erina. "What the fu-...Kid? Where'd you go? I swear if you bailed I am going to beat your little a-"
CLANG!
From out of nowhere, the ringing of metal piercing metal screeched to the side of her. Rémi cringed from the sudden shock and stared viciously at the origin when her face immediately shifted to one of sheer astonishment. Young Erina, with a bundle of ropes tying her to the very same block that nearly crushed the guardian on their first day, was hanging a foot above her with the most cheeky grin on her face. "Who will join whom at the top?~" Rémi smirked and shot daggers with her eyes at the rude little pupil. "You snot nosed brat, when I climb up there, you're in a world of hurt!!" But the student laughed and continued her ascent before giving one last look to her master, "Then you'd best catch me, Missus Slowpoke!"
The brawny damsel accepted the challenge and pushed forth with the advance when only a few hooks in, the weight began to collapse. Rémi felt the rope on her back dig so painfully deep that it felt more like a shovel carving her. But this was just the beginning and they had such a distance to cover. She sucked it up and heaved. Her hand vibrated just to dig the hook out of the wall and her whole body spasmed just maintaining the minimal height they were at now. By the time she had managed to hook the rod just a few inches above, Rémi already observed Erina pushing to the sky with relative ease. They grow up so fast... But she lay the sentiment away while her problem remained. The ultimate block lived up to its name. And though the woman was unsure how she'd manage to carry it to the top, one thing was certain: failure was not an option. The other hand dug the hook out from the wall and soared slightly skyward. Rémi looked down - one foot since her leap. There would be so many more.
They started at the crack of dawn when the sun was only an infant and climbed that tower with the earth pulling them down. Several hours passed and by the afternoon, they were in the cloud of smog that polluted the city and to no surprise it impeded their progress tremendously. The woman used her collar to vent out any toxic gas she could but she heard violent coughs coming from the direction of her protege. Don't give up now, Erina...Not when you've come so far. But it was far easier to speak than to act. Rémi was in quite a predicament herself. She managed to find a ledge on the upper walls of the factory that she used to recover some of her upper body strength. The trek had involved almost all of her back and arms yet a second's glance at the peak and she could see it so close to her. However, she needed time to rest and was worried if her student was wise enough to utilize her resources.
The coughing continued and Rémi's worry escalated beyond slight concern. She felt tempted to cry out and encourage her. But it would have been wrong; only children needed words to motivate them. She had to act to show her student the way. Her eyes sparkled even within the cloud of darkness.
Her rejuvenated hands tightened around the hooks again and she pulled herself bound for the summit. The ultimate block swayed in the wind and its ropes scarred her back tissue as she move further up the 'mountain'. But she had to get to her apprentice. There was no other thing she could think about. Rémi growled as she breathed in a deep breath. "Grr...RAGH!" The pink beast dashed upward the wall like a maniac, using her hooks to propel her body forward with every step. She could feel the breeze of smog clearing before her face and just a few feet away, she saw the daughter's face buried deep in the wall and coughing nonstop.
"ERINA!" The master cried out. Her feet began to shake as the adrenaline started to deplete from the brawny buxom creature. She saw the poor girl watching her scale the tower on foot and stared in awe even through loss of breath. Rémi swore she saw her little fingers grip so tightly around her hooks. And a grin emerged among the smog, fully aware that this day was theirs.
The pink crowned guardian forwent her footing and held onto her hooks with a massive gust entering her lungs. Her protege dug her nose into her collar and did the same. They hung off the factory wall side by side and together they nodded in agreement that this was the final push. On the count of three, they gave it their all. Their muscles twitched and the two made for a last-ditch effort by skyrocketing to the summit. Feminine bodies soared up the metal cliffs of the abandoned factory walls and arced their ascent until they came crashing down to the platform with a most satisfying thud.
Erina vented and sighed with ecstasy and relief, laughing hysterically that this test had truly been bested. Her master kneeled trying to catch her breath but did not succeed at hiding her smug and joyful face. Rémi watched her student laugh and smile so happily that it warmed her own heart to see a young face as full of life like hers. Especially after the two years she spent living in misery. She was proud and knew she earned it. The master stood up to offer a hand for her protege when an odd thing entered her sight. Erina's face developed a darker shade, then a zone around her body and soon she was encapsulated within a section of shadow. What did this mean?-
Rémi felt time stop in that very moment. The ropes on her back were no longer heavy. They were not pulling her down. They were pulling her up. She did not have time to turn around, she simply knelt to take her cackling student's body into her own and punched the sky with all the might she had left.
KA-BOOM!!!
The ultimate block split apart against the lady Dermott's mountainous fist and fell back to its beloved earth in twin pieces. Rémi let out a weak laugh and fell to the floor in a slump. She felt her eyes sinking as strength faded from her body. The summit had been conquered but she had not expected the trial to challenge her so blatantly in a secret two-parter. The master gazed at the heavens with its midday star shining down on the two of them. She felt a pair of hands forcefully shaking her. Her student. Of course, how foolish she was to forget the reason they came this far.
Her voice cried out to her so desperately and pitifully, it made her smile even more. "Please Missus! Get up! Please! You have to tell me what's next! You promised!!" Those tiny fingers did everything they could get a rise out of her. And all Rémi could do was cough out a laugh or two. Until she heard that most familiar tip tap of water coming from her right.
"Please...Missus Dermott. I need you...Please."
Rémi's coughing ceased and she turned to meet her sniveling little baby. She brought a finger to the girl's chin and it startled her so. Her eyes were wet and they glowed so brightly in the sunlight. Rémi grinned and despite her condition, spoke with the authority of a true master, "Are you stronger?"
Erina nodded uncontrollably without hesitation and wiped away her tears while doing so. The woman chuckled and brushed her hand against the girl's hair, like a mother would for her daughter. She whispered gently to force the girl to come in close and listen. And when the winds settled and the tears had ceased, she said it.
"Good. Because now we're ready...
You and I have a score to settle with some very bad people."
That night, the two finished all that was left in the fridge. In the following days, either through victory or defeat, they would never return here again. But before they went off to dream, the woman remembered a detail about their first encounter that brought up a question that needed answering.
"Erina?...Why did you take my sword all those days ago?"
"But you're strong now right? Do you still need a sword?"
To be continued...
You and I have a score to settle with some very bad people."
That night, the two finished all that was left in the fridge. In the following days, either through victory or defeat, they would never return here again. But before they went off to dream, the woman remembered a detail about their first encounter that brought up a question that needed answering.
"Erina?...Why did you take my sword all those days ago?"
"...Because I wasn't strong. And I needed something that was."
"But you're strong now right? Do you still need a sword?"
"No, I don't need something strong. I have You."
To be continued...
