(03-11-2019, 09:34 AM)Black Aeronaut Wrote: Ah, I knew I was forgetting some characters!  In that case, Ben will make sure to have good vegetarian eats on-hand.

Also, Ayanami Rei very much enjoys being in the water, so along with Teletha, that's going to make for three 'Mermaids' at the poolside.  And Rei will probably play games of chess with Ami and Teletha as well.

(03-11-2019, 09:34 AM)Black Aeronaut Wrote: There will be plenty of booze.  It being San Antonio, Ben will be able to get quite a selection of great local craft brews on hand.  (Stuff like Freetail Brewery whose logo is a freetail bat and a slogan of "Hang with a local" printed upside-down.)  He'll be sorely tempted to stop taking his meds for the 24 hours leading up to the event so he can enjoy drinking Angry Orchard.  ...Which would be a good explanation for his melancholic state of mind despite the festivities.

(03-11-2019, 09:34 AM)Black Aeronaut Wrote: Ben's music collection will make up for a good bit of the party music, but he'll call in to Minako for an assist.  When 33-Stars isn't actively playing, expect EDM with a good shotgun scattering of 80's and 90's music suitable for dancing, and Minako's J-pop collection.  After-party music will probably consist of The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and piano arrangements of various other songs.

Quote:Benjamin sighed as he watched the party from one of the unoccupied tables in the courtyard.
It weighed on him, but in a good way.  There was just his monumental feeling that comes of one seeing his actions come to fruition in such a huge way - that despite the efforts everyone else put into is, he was responsible for all this.

And really, it was a resounding success.  Everyone was mingling outside of their usual circles.  Granted, he and Rob had to get the ball rolling, introducing people to each other and encouraging them all to socialize.

And now, everyone had someone else to talk to.

Everyone but him.

He didn’t like it, but he knew that it only stood to reason: he was no super genius, had no fantastical powers, didn’t pilot any sort of mecha or space ship.  And sure, he had some time in the US Navy, it was nothing compared the the experiences of everyone else.  He had just been a maintenance technician.  No more.  No less.

He had nothing of any real value to contribute except empty small talk.

“Hello Rodes’-san!” came Nanoha Takamachi’s voice out of the blue, mildly surprising him and immediately drawing his attention to the girl.  With her was Fate, and they were holding hands - together already just like the couple they would be in the future.

“Ah, Takamachi-san, Miss Testarossa,” said Ben amiably.  “I hope that you two are enjoying the party.”

“Unh!” replied Nanoha happily as Fade nodded with a smile.  “We’ve been having a great time!  I never ever thought I’d get to meet these people.  I’ve been having a lot of fun telling Fate about the things they’ve done.  But the only person I haven’t had a chance to talk to yet is you, Rodes’-san.”

“Pfah,” replied Ben.  “I ain’t anyone special.  The only thing that makes me special at all is that I’ve seen some anime that happen to have you people in them.”

“Well,” said Nanoha a bit slowly.  “What do you think of me?”

Ben smiled mildly.  How adorable, he thought to himself.  Why would she want to know that from me, though?

“Hmmm,” said Ben thoughtfully.  “I think you’re a wonderful person.  You’re brave and courageous.  You have a strong heart.  You’re not afraid to stand up for what you believe in, and standing against someone, even if you might get hurt.  Everything about you is beautiful, Na-” Ben stopped himself short of using her given name, as that was being too forward in Nanoha’s culture.  So, instead he corrected himself.  “...Takamachi-san.”

“Please,” said the girl.  “I want you to be my friend.  So call me Nanoha instead.”

“Alright then,” said Ben, his smile broadening but still seemingly wistful.  “Then you can call me Ben or Benjamin.”

“I like the sound of Benjamin,” said Nanoha.  “It has a nice sound to it.  So, why are you by yourself over here?”

Ben shrugged.  “Well, like I said, I’m no one special.  And to be honest, with as much as I know about the people here, I think that it’s best if I just let them be.  It’d feel so weird for someone that already knows them all so well to interfere.”

“But that’s not your fault, Benjamin,” said Nanoha.  “And I think you are special.  Someone who’s willing to help people like us...  You’re a very good and wonderful person for wanting to help.”

“I try to be,” said Ben.  “But in my experience... that’s not always enough.  The world wants a lot more from me than I can give sometimes.”

“What do you mean?” asked Nanoha.

Ben sighed and then looked at the two, and then looked right into Fate’s eyes.

There was something there in those eyes of hers.  Oh, they were beautiful, alright.  Not at all like the strange pinkish-blue of an albino’s eyes.  But instead, her irises were a vivid ruby-red, through and through, glimmering like a ruby reflecting light.

But beyond the sheer beauty of her eyes... there was something there.  Some sort of longing and... hope?  But hope for what, Ben wondered.  But even so, Ben knew a kindred spirit when he saw one.  While Nanoha’s eyes were filled with love and joy, Fate’s were filled with the somber repose that only the abused could have.

“Go ahead and have a seat, you two,” said Ben.  “This is gonna take a bit to explain.”

Nanoha and Fate both eagerly went to the other side of the table, still hand-in-hand as they sat together and looked to Ben with suspenseful gazes.

He sighed before he went on, “Miss Testarossa?”

“You can call me Fate,” she said quietly, but clearly enough for Ben to understand her, even as she shyly looked down.  “If you’re Nanoha’s friend... then you’re my friend, too.”

“Okay then Fate,” said Ben, causing her to look up with a hopeful smile.  “But only as long as you call me by my name, too,” he said small wink.

“Of course!” replied the girl as Nanoha beamed happily.

Ben sighed again.  He hated to kill the mood, but he felt that the two needed to understand...

“Fate, the thing is that you and I are alike in the sense that we’ve both been abused by our parents.”

Nanoha’s face fell instantly and Fate gasped as she covered her mouth.

“Don’t worry,” said Ben.  “I wasn’t beaten like you were by Precia.  Though some might say that what I had was just as bad.”

“What do you mean?” asked Fate with a worried tone.

“Psychological abuse,” said Ben.  “My scars are all up in here,” he said, pointing up at his head.  “And down here, too,” he said, this time pointing down at his heart.  “You see, when we’re children, we take in everything we see and hear.  It’s very hard to override the things we learn when we’re young.  And that is what makes child abuse so terrible.  It programs a child to think exactly what the abuser tells them.”

Ben saw the tears brimming in Fate’s eyes, and he knew for sure that she was remembering every horrible thing Precia had ever told her.  So he reached out and took her hands in his own in an effort to show his solidarity with her.

He went on, “My father... He called me an idiot.  A moron.  A dumb shit.  When I could not complete jobs to his perfectionist standards, he started calling me ‘Half-a-Job’.  But then after that, he took it back, said, ‘No, you’re not even a half-a-job, you’re a Tenth-of-a-Job.’

“And what was worse was that my younger brothers would see this, and they took it to mean that they were better than me.  They’d come inside my room, destroy my treasured possessions, and even kill my pet fish.  And my father absolutely refused to let me have a lock on my door, because he didn’t want me to be able to hide anything from him, never minding the fact that he’d have a key of his own.

“That was my childhood.  When I was in my second year of high school I dropped out because I couldn’t do it anymore.  I was bullied everywhere I went and nothing anyone did ever helped.  And when I was twenty, I was so dysfunctional that I couldn’t live on my own without support.

“The only thing that kept me from actively planning my own suicide was that I knew it would have destroyed my mother.  She will never say it to anyone, but I know: I am her favorite, and only because I am so much like her that it hurts her to see me hurt.  She sees herself in me - her little gender-flipped carbon copy.  And I did not want to be so selfish as to inflict the sort of pain that my end would have brought her.

“I have been there, Fate.  I have been so miserable, lonely, and crushed that I wanted my life to end.”

He hadn’t meant for it to come out, but it had anyhow.  Nanoha looked on in dumb-founded horrification.  And Fate...

Fate charged around the table and wrapped her arms tightly around Benjamin, burying her face against his chest, quietly sobbing as her tears soaked through his shirt.

Ben put an arm around her, slowly rubbing her back in an effort to quietly comfort her.

“I’m still here, though,” he said quietly.  “Just like you.  I’m still here.”

Nanoha suddenly appeared at his other side, putting her arms around both Ben and Fate as tears slowly fell from her eyes.  She knew she liked Benjamin the moment she saw him.  There was just something about him that called to her - exotic, enticing, and powerful.

But what he revealed... and what he was doing for Fate in doing so...

Nanoha Takamachi swore to herself that day that she would make Benjamin as much a part of her life as Fate was.

No matter what obstacles stood in her way.

##

Meanwhile, from the mezzanine of the second floor, Momoko and Shiro watched.

“Dammit,” cursed Shiro softly.  “Even in a different Earth, why the hell does there have to be such horrible stories.”

“I’m surprised,” said Momoko, comforting her husband with a touch.  “Normally that’s not what a man is concerned with when his youngest daughter is hugging a man that age.”

Shrio scoffed.  “As if I could bring myself to feel anger towards a man like him.  I can’t even imagine what that was like.  My father was tough on me, but he never did anything or said anything to make me feel like I had no value.”  He then sighed.  “Though you’re right about our little girl.  This is going to be an issue.”

“You think so?” asked Momoko.

“You told me she never left my side when I was in the hospital.  She did that because she didn’t know what she could do to help.  We might as well have just gift wrapped her and Fate for that man.”

Momoko sighed.  “Aren’t you being a little melodramatic?”

“Maybe,” admitted Shiro.  “But that still leaves us in a very awkward position.  And him as well.  I know that he won’t do anything inappropriate with them.  But...”

“No, I understand.  She won’t either.  But she will want to spend a lot of time here.  It was bad enough with Fate.  You know that they share the same futon every time?”

Shiro nodded.  “Even if I had the heart to separate them, I doubt that I could with their bodies being that tangled together.  I couldn’t even tell whose limbs were whose.”

“Well, we should probably start planning for the worst,” said Momoko.

“I’ll talk to them, make sure they know they can’t go gallivanting off.  All girls have to have their first case of heartbreak.”

“Shiro.  Let’s take him with us.”

He shot his wife a shocked look.  “Back to the Midoriya!?”

Momoko shook her head.  “Back to Uminari City.”

“Why?”

“Belldandy said that everyone gets a wish.  One wish only.”  She then said and said, “If our little girl really has fallen for him... then I’ll wish for him to go back with us.”

“But he’s already middle-aged.  He’s going to be almost fifty by the time Nanoha can marry him.”

“I’ll ask Washu-chan if she can do something about his age.  I’d be surprised if she can’t.”

Shiro sighed.  “I’m not trying to fight you on this.  As her mother, this is your prerogative... but, why?”

“If he was just a child, would you have adopted him?”

Shiro blinked.  “If I had even seen a little bit of what he said?  Anything to get him away from that... person.”

Momoko nodded.  “There are so many people in the world that deserve another chance.  Fate is lucky that Nanoha came into her life.  Our little girl isn’t the type to just give up on someone.  And she’s not going to give up on Benjamin now.”

“Can we actually do this?” he asked.

Momoko nodded.  “Nanoha can take care of herself.  She’s shown recently that she is a lot more capable than we ever gave her credit for.  She’s a good girl that way.  And him?  He’s the type to fall all over himself to pull his weight.  We might actually have to get him to hold back a bit.”

“That won’t be all,” said Shiro with a sigh.  “I hope that Washu-chan really can make him a kid again, because otherwise that is something that never really heals.  As he is now, he’s cursed for life.  But if we can give him another childhood... then he might have a bit of a chance.”

Momoko nodded.  “I once read something on the internet.  How people would come to this person, on the brink of losing to depression, begging for any help.  He said that he admired these people.  They weren’t weak at all.  After all, they’d made it to his door despite the odds.  To him, they were like soldiers trapped for years behind enemy lines, lost in a jungle, no weapon, no ammunition, starving and so sick that they’re starting to hallucinate monsters in the shadows.  And they’re crying out, ‘I’m not dying out here! Give me anything, even if it’s just a stick!’”

Shiro looked into his wife’s eyes at that, and saw that they were glistening with tears threatening to spill over.  But there was no real sadness there - only a heartfelt empathy.

“Benjamin wants a stick,” she said.  “Let’s give him a set of kodachi instead and teach him how to use them.”

In that moment, Shiro was reminded how beautiful and magnificent his wife is, and exactly where Nanoha got it from.  As he held his wife close, his only hope was that Benjamin understood the precious treasure that seemed to have fallen in his lap.

(03-14-2019, 07:33 AM)robkelk Wrote:

Spoilered snip for brevity

Rob noticed one of his boarders heading towards Ben and Fate (and Nanoha), and moved fast. "Could I have a moment, Usagi?"

"Can it wait, Rob-san? Ben looks so sad, and I need to help."

"It's because you want to help that it can't wait. Ben needs to do this on his own."

Usagi looked puzzled. "I don't understand."

Rob smiled kindly. "No. You wouldn't have any reason to understand. You and I come from happy homes, with parents and siblings who we love and who love us. Ben ... it's his story to tell, but his childhood wasn't that happy. And Fate..."

"What about Fate?"

"Fate ... she lived through a family life that would anger even you. Ben and Fate share something that we will never know first-hand. There will be time for our gifts of compassion later, Usagi. Right now, they need to talk on their own without us privileged people swooping in to help."

"But... I can't just leave them to their pain."

"I don't want you to leave them to their pain. Right now, they're sharing their pain. Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased."

"That's so profound."

Rob grinned for a moment. "I got that from the regulars at a bar." Then he sighed. "We can share joy later."

"If you're sure..."

"I'm sure."

"But I want to help now."

"Sometimes all we can do is sit and wait. That's something Nanoha and I have in common."

Quote:why do good women attract/accept shitheads?