Little Wing

"Ku ku ku, very interesting."

The high pitch of Sergeant Major Kururu's laugh and the way it shifted into the almost dark fascination in their words would have sent a chill down any Keronian's spine -- and probably most of the humans who knew them, too. Mutsumi, however, just grinned into her arms. Her head was pillowed on them, and she was relaxed even in her position stretched out on her stomach on top of a cold metal table in Kururu's lab, shirtless so that she could better be examined.

"N326ans don't need to manifest any of their energy as wings to fly," her friend continued. She felt a small, warm hand press to her right shoulder blade, fingers splayed in the space between the skin of her back and where the wings in question floated. They weren't physically connected to her at all, but they waved gently in the air at the sensation anyway.

"I may have picked up their aura, but I haven't exactly mastered what they can do yet," Mutsumi explained. "I've never really been sure how to get rid of these again, either. Usually they just go away on their own." It could be kind of inconvenient -- Fuyuki had almost seen them once or twice! -- but it had never really bothered her. This hadn't been a secret, exactly... She just hadn't planned on saying anything about it.

"How long does that take?"

"It varies a little. I'm not sure why..." She couldn't suppress the shiver that went through her when Kururu's hand went from her back to her right wing. It didn't feel exactly like Kururu was touching skin; it was... kind of indescribably weird! "It doesn't seem to matter how I used them or for how long or anything like that. But it usually takes an hour or two, more or less."

Kururu laughed again, this time obviously at her. "That's so inexact."

"Sorry," Mutsumi said, unapologetically. "I never timed it. Sometimes I nap while I'm waiting for them to go away--"

The sensation that came at the tail end of that sentence was a bit more describable: something like a pinch to her back, but with a bit of the feeling of a hair being plucked from her head, only more so. It didn't hurt badly, but it was unexpected enough that her voice cut off in a gasp.

"Yoink!" Kururu was audibly grinning. "Did you know you actually have feathers?"

"Really?" Mutsumi was torn between reactions there, but she couldn't keep the amusement out of her voice as she craned to look back over her shoulder. "Did you just pull out a feather? ...Can I see it?"

She'd seen his own wings, of course, and the idea that there were actually feathers involved was a new one! Whenever they manifested, they looked a bit more like... clouds, than anything, a nearly white, misty sort of energy that gathered into the compressed shape of small, stylized wings. They weren't attached, they didn't flap, she didn't actually seem to use them to fly -- they were just there, and were totally smooth shapes that evoked cherubic wings but hadn't seemed to have individual feathers at all.

"Take it, but I'm taking another one," Kururu warned as they passed it over. "I want to study it, ku ku!"

"Sure. You might not have that long, though." Mutsumi turned the little feather gingerly held in her fingers, then shifted to place it carefully in her other palm to examine it that way. It was strange... It was very small, and had the general shape of a feather, complete with a little bit of calamus at the end and even a slightly poofier downy shape right above that, and even a little notch in it! But there were no individual barbs or barbules, just that same smooth, unbroken, slightly misty energy.

"How weird..." She was pretty delighted by that, though.

"I know. Ten minutes to a little over an hour. I'll assume ten minutes." Kururu's hand was back to touching her wing, and though she expected the tug and little jolt of pain that time, she still twitched, the muscles at her back tensing and then relaxing as the sensation went down her spine. "It's a shame... I'd like to examine you a little longer."

Maybe it was the phrasing of that, or maybe it was just the way Kururu's hand stayed in her wing for a few moments longer, fingers moving almost soothingly in the aftermath of the way the pluck had stung. It was an unspoken little moment of kindness and gentleness from someone who couldn't stand either of those things, and Mutsumi could feel her face heating up a little.

She didn't say anything about it. Instead, she grinned down at the little feather in her hand. "Oh, really? You can't think of any tests to run on me while I don't have visible wings, Kururu?"

"Now, did I say that?" There was a grin back in Kururu's voice, and they scritched at the wing before pulling their hand away, making Mutsumi shiver in a way that she knew was a little too obvious. Not that she minded; whether or not Kururu said or did anything about that... it would be fun! "Hope you have the rest of the day free, Saburo."

Kururu was always fun. More than anything else she had going on in her life.

"What, I'm not going anywhere?"

"No, you're not."

Mutsumi rolled her shoulders, resting her cheek on one arm to watch as Kururu headed over to place the feather in a little vial. "I'm good with that."