Morning After

[Katyusha Kohklova]

Against her better judgement, Katyusha found herself at the same cafe she had visited the previous day.  Common sense would tell her it was a bad idea to keep coming to the same place you ran into two other masters, but she was in no condition to care about any of that.  The poor girl sat with her head on the table, glaring spitefully at the glass of water next to her plate.  Her skull felt like it was about to split open, her stomach was doing backflips, and her body felt like it weighed 300 kilograms.  Why had she ever let Rostam convince her to stop drinking?  She felt like she might die from withdrawal before any masters got to her at this rate.

When the food finally came -- some kind of pasta or something -- Katyusha managed to get a whole two bites in before she rushed to the restroom and deposited the contents of her stomach in the toilet.  She collapsed against the wall of the stall, feeling utterly hopeless.  "Ugh, I can't take this Archer.  I need something to keep my mind off alcohol if we're going to keep this up.  Lets do something fun."  The effort of talking brought bile to Katyusha's throat again, and she clung to the rim of the toilet as if she might float away if she let go.  She heaved a sigh when she was through, and wiped her mouth.  With bloodshot eyes that were beginning to well up, she managed a resentful chuckle.  "God this sucks."

[Rostam]

Rostam watched the street warily from his perch on the rooftop directly above Katyusha’s head – before she escaped to the bathroom, anyway. He would have preferred a better position but he had been concerned about his Master and decided to stay closer than he usually would. He sympathized with her condition, as it was not unknown to him, but the circumstances of when it’d happened to him were a bit different. Still, there was really no helping it short of simply waiting it out. She had the right idea about distracting oneself from the nausea, however – Rostam preferred simply eating bread to keep it down, but people had different methods.

“What would you constitutes as ‘fun’, Master?” Rumbled the voice inside Katyusha’s head: “This thing that is in my mind called an amusement park seems like it would only make matters worse. Perhaps exercise? Something else to get your mind off things?”

Sightseeing might have worked as well. Fresh air, too – perhaps some place outside the city. This location was not entirely safe, so leaving was wise… But she insisted on coming here, where their foolish enemy said he would also go ‘tomorrow’. With no indication of time, sitting here the entire day would prove fruitless, and with boredom leaving the girl to focus on her nausea, it would not be good, even if they encountered a foe. The lack of concentration could prove fatal unless he ended the fight quickly, and he had not been one for such rushed gambits. Battle was not meant to be a work of seconds.

“…If I had to make a suggestion about your plight, I would suggest you taking a lemon and taking a bite out of it. The bitter taste had always eliminate any after-effect for me. True, I had to eat quite a few with my stature being what it is, but… I think one should be enough.”

There had to have been a store nearby that would sell them – perhaps the restaurant would be able to provide some. Getting her to actually bite into raw lemon and chew it… Rostam considered his options critically, deciding she likely would not do that too gladly. If she didn’t, however, there were other options. For now… “I suggest a walk outside, for now, Master. Fresh air should do you some good. We could buy the lemon along the way. If this country has other bitter fruits you would prefer, we could get those, too. The fool from yesterday is not likely to come back now that he’s had time to reconsider his options.”

[Katyusha Kohklova]

Katyusha stood paralyzed in the middle of the street, glaring down her nemesis with eyes full of ire.  She knew better than to judge it by its soft, supple skin and small size.  Beneath that cute exterior was a potent acid that would sear her throat and bring tears instantly to her eyes.  Lemons.  If there was a God, why would he create such a foul organism and then deign to call it food.  Katyusha gripped the citrus fruit slightly tighter, causing a bit of juice to squirt onto her cheek.  She instinctively recoiled, glad to have been lucky enough that it had missed her eye.  She would have felt safer handling a live grenade.

But consuming this lemon was a necessary evil.  Rostam wouldn't lie to her-- this had to help.  She narrowed her eyes and scrunched up her face, trying to mentally prepare herself for the agony to come.  Not wanting to prolong her own torture, Katyusha jammed the entire lemon in her mouth as fast as she could and started chewing, rind and all.  She lasted a whole two seconds before the sharp sour taste flooded every nerve ending in her mouth.  She stiffened up straight as a board, her eyes wide enough to pop out of her head, then fell to the ground and started thrashing and screaming and cursing the whole world.  She spit out the lemon rather than swallowing it, and as the sour taste subsided from her mouth, she glared at the messy lump of pulp that had done this to her.  But the longer she sat there, her face softened to an expression of astonishment.  She felt great.  Her head still hurt a bit, but her nausea was completely gone, and the heaviness in her limbs had all but disappeared.  How the terrible ordeal had performed such a miracle was beyond her, but she didn't care one bit.  "It... It worked!  IT WORKED!  AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"  Katyusha was running in circles, proclaiming her victory with tears of joy streaming down her face.  She didn't even notice all the dumbfounded onlookers giving her an increasingly wide berth as they passed her by.