Medicinal Dango, Magnaroar Dango

***

The huntress awoke, as she did on many mornings, with the faces of the twins over her. They shared a glance, giggled, and scampered off. This might have constituted the crime of breaking and entering in other places, other worlds, but here in Kamura everyone was like family and such mischief was simply par for the course.

The huntress, Izumi, pulled herself out of bed and stretched. Deltoids and glutes, triceps and abs rippled almost invisibly beneath a layer of well-fed softness. The mid-morning sun was filtering in bright and warm, her slime-green Kinsect was feasting on a surfeit of jelly, and her loyal feline companion, Squid Ink Pasta, had made a more mammalian-suitable breakfast--fish so fresh you'd think they could flop around on the plate. If they hadn't been fried and garnished, natch.

After cheerfully stuffing herself full of nutrients and an obscene calorie load, Izumi picked up Squid Ink Pasta and gave her a cheek-to-cheek nuzzle before striding out into the village's main--and almost only--thoroughfare. Warm, familiar faces greeted her with sunlike brightness and ever-present cheer; Fugen laughing with the force of the steelworks bellows, Komitsu with her shiny sweetness, Yomogi with her bouncy energy. The crowd of faces parted gradually at the exchange of pleasantries and the occasional headpat. The pink-petaled entrance of the Hub beckoned her in. After a little bit of counter-leaning banter with Minoto and the toad-sat Hojo, Izumi began to pace through the Hub, flipping through this month's hunt commissions. 

Nothing really stood out. Her mentor and longtime friend, Master Utsushi, flashed her an ebullient grin and asked if maybe she had the Arena on her mind, but none of the monsters listed piqued her interest either...

And just when Izumi had resigned herself to a placid but unremarkable afternoon of mining, bug-catching and herb-gathering at the shrine, her eye happened to flick leftward as the sun caught the blue-silver glint of High-Rank Huntress Ayame's hair. She was leaning over the railing, staring at the water. And as if launched forward by the metaphorical wirebug of Ayame's softly torrid air of tragic charisma, soon Izumi found herself leaning over that same railing, quietly for a moment, until Ayame happened to glance over with a timidity that truly did not seem to suit her.

Izumi let the silence sparkle like the sun on the clear, fresh water, before letting her words lightly ripple like the perpetually falling petals upon its surface. "Damn. Ain't it serene? Makes you wanna just take the day off..."

Ayame scoffed good-naturedly. "Ha. At least you have the choice."

The timbre in Ayame's voice suggested that her snark had a bit of lamentation deep down in it. Izumi knew this about her already. They'd been talking just about every day since she'd seriously started hunting work. You don't just jump back into the hunt after sustaining injuries like the ones Ayame'd gotten. "I do have a choice. What a shame that I suck so much at making it though. Here, look through this stack of flyers. Do you see anything worth my time?"

Shuffling through the ink-rendered faces of various monsters, Ayame quickly came to a conclusion guided by her long experience as a high-rank hunter. "Nada. I doubt a single thing in here is worth farming, unless there's some weird gimmick weapon you're saving up for that you never told me about."

Izumi took the fluttery, loosely rolled scrolls back from Ayame's offering hands. "You think I'd do something like that? Make a big ice-elemental toothbrush or paralytic pool noodle without telling you?"

Ayame smirked. "No, I suppose not, since you're so well-known for wasting precious time coming over here and telling me about every piece of minute trivium that happens to you in your hunting exploits in hopes that I'll have something new to say." She pulled her gaze away and looked back over the water in one of her typical melodramatic 'oh, leave me be...' gestures.

Of course, Izumi had no intentions of leaving her be. "C'mon. Get your perky butt up off this veranda and come get some Bunny Dango with me. I have literally nothing to do today and if I get too bored then I might start a Rampage myself. Do you want that weighing on your conscience?"

Ayame did not want that weighing on her conscience. So she peeled her perky butt from its posted position on the veranda and strode alongside the huntress out past the florally bedecked gates of the gathering hub, to the little place of cloth-draped benches and vats of poundable, incessantly pounded mochi tended lovingly by the ever-present cat people.

Yomogi bounded up, clearly elated to see the huntress (even if their last meeting had been a half-hour ago) but was overjoyed in particular to see Ayame, who she could not resist giving a hug to. The considerate Yomogi did not let her enthusiasm compromise her tenderness, and she artfully avoided any spots on Ayame that hurt. Then she broke away, blushed, and proceeded to the business of taking orders.

Ayame got something blue, something purple, and something black. Izumi got her usual green-green-purple thing. When the fluffy puffs of colored mochi in the sky found their resting place upon skewers and were handed off to the hungry hunters, Ayame and Izumi smiled at each other and clinked the sticks together before sitting on a nearby bench and chowing down.

Ayame was rather stunned. "I glimpse you eating all the time in the Hub, but I had no idea that you treated bunny dango as an inhalant rather than a victual." Izumi smirked shamelessly. "Psh, I'm just efficient."

Ayame took another bite of the pale blue fluff on the stick and chewed it thoughtfully before gulping. "Efficient... Always gotta get back to the next hunt, right? I remember when I as like that. I mean, I -get- it, I really do. But these days, I just..."

Her interest piqued, Izumi cocked her head quizzically, like Cohoots do when you're cooing in pet-lover-speak at them. "You just...?"

Sheepish, Ayame turned away, holding the half-eaten dango in front of her face like an impromptu demure face-veiling fan. "Well, being efficient is no good for me these days. It was! It used to be, back when my greatest joy was the hunt, and all I ever thought about was what I'd be skull-smashing with a charged up greatsword next. And now... I don't know. Ever since the day I messed up and got battered and ripped to shreds by talon and tail... ever since then, I can't be efficient when it comes to pleasures. I have to savor them. It's the pleasures that offset the pain. I need so much of that. So I relax on the veranda and eat Bunny Dango and listen to other people's conversations and I just take it all slow because..."

A nod from Izumi; understanding. "Because you need to savor the pleasure that offsets the pain."

Ayame chuckled ruefully. "Yup, you got it."

Holding up her second sheaf of dango, Izumi paused before wolfing it down. She took a small bite of it and pulled it off the stick. Slowly, patiently she chewed while Ayame looked on in mild surprise. The experience held many facets; flavor, texture, aroma, the morphic progression of the material's viscosity as mastication and salivary chemical breakdown altered its form slowly. When the pasty mochi was well-chewed and chemically simplified by spit, Izumi swallowed, and looked at Ayame as if enlightenment had just dawned. "Hey, that was pretty good!"

"Right?" Ayame gave a good-natured laugh. "I can't believe I had to explain to a grown woman that you should chew your food so you can taste it more."

The sweet, silly Izumi was oblivious to the playful jab. "So does it really work? Savoring pleasure to help fight the pain? Does the good stuff really win out over the bad stuff?"

Ayame looked thoughtful for a second, and said nothing at first. This was not a line of inquiry she was used to entertaining. "...Not at first. When pain is too great, it leads to anhedonia. So when the wounds were still fresh, nothing was powerful enough to get through to me. Those were horrible days, and I don't think anything except the twin oblivions of medicine and sleep gave me any solace. But the body is meant to heal, you know? We sleep, the body repairs, we eat, the body repairs, wounds turn to scar tissue, and what was an acute agony becomes a dull, if irritatingly chronic, ache that only flares up when the wrong stimuli is applied. So as I recovered, I found... small miracles every day."

"Food started to taste good again. The warm spring air felt pleasant and gentle. Music had a sublime comfort. Reading sparked imagination again. I could, hahaha... And I'm *only* telling you this because, despite all the odds, you have won yourself into my good graces through idiotic persistence. I could, um, you know... T... Touch myself again... I had to be careful and not tense up or twitch too much in the wrong places, but when I did it, I felt like... I felt like warm pink bubbly fizzy-mineral hot spring water all over, you know? I felt the kind of joy that makes you grateful to still be alive, and so MUCH of it, all from such a simple act... N-not that I'm some kind of--I mean--It's not like I do that ALL the time, I just--"

The huntress, Izumi of Kamura, had slowly been turning the slow cogs and gears in her head as she listened to Ayame's soliloquy. And after a brief ponderous silence at the end of it, Izumi had her eureka moment; her eyes widened and she pounded her fist vertically into her open palm. "Oh! That's brilliant! That'll work great!"

Ayame looked extremely dubious. "Uh, excuse me--what are you saying is going to work great?"

Izumi stood up, polished off her remaining dango, and gently ushered Ayame out of her seat. "You've gotta come to my place! If touching yourself helped you recover so much, then--then trust me, I'm gonna do something that's gonna--that's gonna blow your mind! That's gonna heal the ***fuck*** out of you!"

She stammered as she followed the eager huntress's bounding skip towards her nearby home. "Heal the--heal the *what* out of me? I mean, surely--I mean surely you know better than to think--and with *me* of all people--and that has to be the stupidest idea I've ever, as if, as if I would even *deign* to--Izumi, are you listening??"

Izumi was not listening. She kept moving. The message of her moving was "follow". And the connotation, the nuance was, "follow me, you know what happens next, you can trust me with it, so follow me if that's what you want." But this was not expressed in words. Merely expressed unspoken, in Izumi's simple act of moving forward.

Ayame made sure to seem suitably exasperated at the stupidity of the whole situation.

But in the end, Ayame followed.

***

The self-proclaimed poet, Shiika, was sitting on a nearby bench and heard everything. She closed her eyes and recited a newly formed verse:

"Scars mar too the soul,
yet imagine: bliss, a salve
applied by a fool."

Shiika sipped her tea, and took another yummy bite. How pleasant indeed.

***

The home of the huntress was quite modest, but for a rustic-spirited woman living alone with Palicoes it felt like more than enough. Outside, meats were smoking, a little bath-hutch was still steaming from recent use, husks of corn were hung out to dry. Thatched roof and ancient wood with an artfully 'scaled' appearance was the facade that framed a wood and paper sliding door left slightly ajar. Inside, the ground level was tamped dirt which spoke of life in sandalprints and Palico pawprints. The high ceilings had an open panel to allow a burning oven-fire far below to ventilate, and for sunlight to stream in. Beams of raw wood and sheared bone gave the bungalow structure and held it up, supported a second-story demi-loft for storage. A high-placed shrine of tutelary devotion bore paper streamers and green bounties. Shelves teemed with cookware and dishes, practice weapons, boxes of knickknacks and trinkets, novelty masks and bamboo-framed hanging photographs, including one at the threshold of Ayame looking on in bemusement as Izumi knelt and made a "nya-nya" pose next to her on the Gathering Hub's veranda.

On the other half of the dwelling, the floor was raised and made of wood, allowing for a little curtained tatami bedroom plus a little dining room/kitchenette that was four floor cushions and a fire with a pot crowned by a stone fish. Izumi nodded to her feline housekeeper meaningfully, and the housekeeper bowed politely to Izumi and her guest and excused herself. Izumi bade Ayame to relax, and they both set to removing their footwear and wiping their feet on the bamboo mat before taking seats on the pristine raised-floor living area. 

Izumi flopped on the cushion with legs spread loosely and haphazardly. Ayame sat seiza, politely and primly with calves tucked under thighs, and placed her hands in her lap formally, like they had come to discuss, fucking, inheritances or something and not, not what Izumi was likely to soon propose. "You know, it's really fine, you didn't have to send her away, I--"

Izumi laughed. "Cmon, I don't like it when the Palicoes see. They're awful gossipy."

Ayame scoffed in disbelief. "What?? See what?"

"Hahaha, you know what I mean. Hey, I've never mentioned this, but I love your armor. That's Nargacuga, right? The netting is so gorgeous. Really strong stuff, almost supernaturally so. And your tummy looks fantastic in it."

"Fantastic? With all the dango I've been eating and all the exercise I haven't been doing?" Izumi nodded and grinned guilelessly, as if to say, I said you looked fantastic and I meant it, yeah? Ayame rolled her eyes, but smiled a little. 

"Ok, fine. I'll take the compliment. And yes, it is Nargacuga. It's funny, I don't know how to put this... You know what we do. Well, what you do, and what I used to do. We hunt monsters. We kill. For protection of the community, for the community's resources, kill only what we need, use everything we kill, all that cliched shit that Master Utsushi probably hammered in your head since day one. But for the most part, it's never a relationship of enmity, is it? It always feels like one of respect. Mutual respect, even, since the monsters have just as much a chance of hunting us as we do of them. And out of all monsters, I feel like Nargacuga is the one I respect the most. She's not--they're not--they're not vindictive creatures, they aren't raging beasts. They're careful and deliberate, they don't pick fights they think they can't win, they're so--they're so *elegant* when they attack or kill. They don't even prey on us, you know? They're just trying to protect themselves. Maybe that's why I feel something of their spirit in me. Why I wear the armor made in honor of the ones I've slain, even though all I do all day is mope while I lean my ass on a railing at the Hub. We're not any different, really. We're all only doing what we can to survive."

Digesting these words for a while, Izumi was silent. She mulled them over, swirled their flavor around her mouth for a while, and found them pleasingly true. "Yeah. No, you're right. We're all doing what we can. Do you think that Nargacugas ever have fun?"

Ayame grinned broadly at the first mention of the question. "Do I! Have you ever seen a nest of Narga kits? You see how much they play? How much fun their mom has playing referee and playing the heavy when one of them gets too aggressive? I KNOW Nargacugas have fun." Izumi nodded in animated recognition. Nargacugas have *so* much fun, don't they.

Continuing without awaiting verbal response from Izumi, Ayame inquired. "What about you? What monster speaks to your spirit?"

The quizzical, puzzled expression that came over Izumi's face almost made Ayame regret asking. Izumi folded her arms and squinted so hard it almost looked like the very process of thinking was painful. When she spoke, it wasn't yet an answer, just another question. "Does it have to be one I've fought?"

Ayame shook her head and shrugged. Whatever floats your boat, the gesture said.

This reply seemed to untangle the Gordian knot that had formed inside Izumi's thick hunter skull. She opened her eyes and looked up at Ayame. "Okay. Cool. Just checking. Astalos."

"Astalos? Don't think I've had the pleasure to meet that one either. Brassy scales, dragonfly wings, green lightning, right?"

"Yeah. They're beautiful. And what's more, they're absolutely hyperaggressive. Not sadistic, wanton, or bloodthirsty, I don't think. But they'll fight anything, and for no reason, be it weaker or stronger, without any motive of resource or territory or self-defense or anything like that. They'll just fucking go apeshit if they see any other monster or any other Hunter in their area. It's almost like... like they know they have incredible abilities, and are obsessed with using them. They live for the sake of testing their abilities, for the feeling of struggle and victory. I hate to say it, because it probably makes me sound psycho, but I think that's me. And I have the trunks full of monster parts to prove it. Maybe Astalos and I will have our fated battle someday."

The former huntress cocked her head at the active huntress. "I guess that makes sense. You've got a lot heat in your blood. More than most hunters this village produces, even the strong ones. You're always looking for the next fight and the bigger fight." As she spoke and considered the implications, Ayame's face broke into a kind of mischievous smirk. "So is that the approach you're going to take with me? The Astalos approach? Hyperaggressive? Struggle and victory? Overpower and claim me?"

Izumi busted out laughing, which was more of a relief to Ayame than she realized. "The Astalos approach? With you? Fuck no. Not with anybody, of course, but especially not you. How do I put this? Astalos doesn't aggress upon anything and everything it sees. It only does so when it thinks there's a fight to be had. So it'll attack other monsters, or hunters bearing weapons, but not like--but not like some random pack of Kelbi. There's no sport in that."

Ayame's expression turned mock-dubious. "Is that what I am to you? Just a Kelbi? So I'm weak and beneath your bug-winged hyperaggressive draconic notice, is that it?"

That immortal grin stayed on Izumi's face as she shook her head. "Nooooope. Yeah, you're like a Kelbi--but Kelbi isn't weak. Kelbi is fucking *invincible*. You knock it down and it always rises up again. You take a piece of hide from it and it grows right back. And anyway, the monster metaphors kind of break down here anyway because neither of us are monsters and I'm not going to hunt you. I was actually planning on healing your grievous physical and spiritual wounds by having wildly consensual sex with you. You know, that whole 'healing the pain with pleasure' thing we were talking about not even an hour ago."

This was too much and Ayame started cracking up hysterically. "You have really got to be kidding me! That's your line? 'I'm going to have wildly consensual sex with you'? Like my consent is a foregone conclusion? Like I even want to--

"Well, I figured it was kind of implied. Since you keep staring at my chest and looking away like you've suddenly become very fascinated by all the random crap I have hung up around the room."

"I have not! I haven't--okay, no, I totally have. But I mean, it's hard *not* to stare! Who wears an Edel layered cleavage-chestpiece around like it's casual clothing?"

"That'd be me. I'm glad you find it hard not to stare. They're really nice, aren't they? I might burn more calories than the Steelworks in a day, but I keep them well fed. Wanna see them closer? Wanna see how deep the cleavage goes?" Izumi got up from her open-legged sprawl and leaned forward *quite* close to Ayame, supporting herself on her fists like a Rajang. Well, like a hot female human Rajang gijinka who has no body hair or weird craggy muscles and has a gigantic rack.

The deep mochi-soft valley beckoned hypnotically to Ayame. Ayame tried her best to keep her cool, failed, and started helplessly sputtering. "Shfshf--Shaa--Th--They're really nice, yeah, I mean, it's not that--I mean--I should be normal about this, right? I'm a girl too, I have them too, so it would be fairly strange for me to have--weird, squirmy feelings about your big--"

Izumi tsk-tsked Ayame at her fallacious sophistries. "Tsk tsk, what fallacious sophistries! Just because you have them too doesn't mean you can't get embarrassingly horny about them. (That's what that is, by the way, that weird, squirmy feeling you're talking about, that's called being horny.) Anyway, I have a rather magnificent set myself but that doesn't mean I'm not checking out the ones on other girls. I think almost every girl of a certain persuasion does it."

The intensely assertive candor of the discussion was starting to make Ayame feel a little too warm even in her breezy armor set. "Okay, I mean, you know I'm 'of a certain persuasion', I don't know how many times we've talked about ex-girlfriends before, but still, to like, just blatantly, look at your chest, and get so-called 'horny' over it, and let you just, totally rub it in my face and be so *blatant* about it, that would be so, that would be so... it'd be so *gauche*, so, so *crass*..."

Izumi of Kamura had not stopped slowly inching forward on her knuckles and moving herself--and her chest--closer to High-Rank Huntress Ayame during the intervening discussion. And now she was quite close to Ayame, and her chest was quite close, occupying so much of Ayame's view, blotting out so many of Ayame's senses, scrambling her better judgment. "Crass?" Izumi posited rhetorically, with a sort of innocent questioning tone that was part sincere and part leading. "I don't know about crass, but... If you like them so much, isn't it okay to enjoy them? Is there anything wrong with being 'blatant' about it? Maybe not every girl has the same interest in them that *you* clearly have, but why should that mean you can't enjoy them, indulge in them, be a little *obsessed* with them, however crass or blatant that may be?"

"I, I don't know--you are *awfully* close* right now--"

"No point in avoiding what feels good, right? Life throws enough bad feelings at us. We have to savor the good."

"Yes--But--Breasts are just--They're not really supposed to be sexual, they're just supposed to be like, functional, for nourishment purposes and the like, so I really shouldn't--"

Izumi giggled fiercely at the wording. "Nourishment, huh? Well, context is everything, right? Riiiight...? Sure, they're strictly functional when they need to be strictly functional. But--hahaha--touch mine a little bit and see how sensitive they are in *this* context. See what being touched there does to me. How it makes me shudder. What sultry noises it causes me to make against your ear. Then you'll see how 'nonsexual' they really are." Ayame was not paying close attention to Izumi's face at the moment, so she couldn't see that expression of pure annoying smug victory she had on.

"Seriously, you are *very, very* close, and I--"

"Shhhh..."

Ayame was suddenly aware that Izumi had taken her by the right shoulder and left hip, and that she was being patiently and gently guided backwards, backwards into the bedding area that was adjacent by only a few feet, where an unstowed futon and its cushy rumple of blankets awaited her like a pitfall trap, falling, falling into that web of awful cozy inevitability...

And when she was finally laid down, Izumi carefully straddled her beautiful friend, making sure not to press any body weight onto her torso. From below, Ayame's eyes finally glanced up, and re-met Izumi's eyes, those pale jade eyes so tender and full of boundless, unselfish love, love and adoration and the most absolute desire to protect and nurture and heal. Ayame had just a moment to take this in before Izumi raised the most gently chiding finger, wiggled it side to side--'no, no'--and drew a downward line from her eyes to her chest. "Eyes down here, please." Ayame nodded and did as she was told. 

And as she looked--as the sight of the heavenly arc of pressed-together wobbly jumbo Bunny Dango loomed larger and closer and larger and closer to her wide-eyed, beatifically smiling face--Ayame felt no pain at all. There was no pain. Just a sheer and endless joy that transcended all time and resolved all contradictions in its warm, melty-ice-cream embrace. And for what felt like hours, and was at least the better part of an hour in reality if not more, Izumi kept Ayame's face stuffed in her chest. Sometimes she manually rubbed it back and forth to squish it in as deeply as possible, and sometimes Ayame did it of her own accord. Sometimes they were still. Sometimes Ayame would start kissing and nibbling and receive Izumi's gaspy, audibly breathless ecstasy in return, and sometimes they'd be quiet and Izumi would stroke the sleek bluemoon-silver of Ayame's hair. There was no hurrying, and no rushing, there was no impatience and no deadline or time limit of any kind. Ayame nestled in Izumi's cleavage as long as Ayame wanted, and Izumi kept Ayame there for as long as Izumi wanted, which turned out to be a long long time.

And when they finally felt satisfaction settle upon them and Izumi slowly, adoringly released her, Izumi kissed Ayame warmly on her smiling lips. And then they made slow, adoring love until dawn, with Ayame's lilty contralto pleasure-song piercing the porous walls of the Kamura huntress's bachelorette pad.

Yes, indeed. Pleasure had won. Izumi, hotblooded, never satisfied with defeat, had utterly conquered the idea of pain with her lips and tongue and fingers and with those breathy little sighs in the cup of Ayame's ear that made her tingle all over. 

Surely the aches of old scars, like the Rampage itself, would come back periodically, even after being resolutely beaten back. But as Ayame lay resting in the softly snoring Izumi's arms, she felt unafraid of that possibility. 

After all, no matter what happened, she would never face it alone, and she would never face it defenseless again.