Recovery I

It was the full-body ache that told Millia she was conscious again. With the fog of sleep still heavy on her mind, her initial response was an instinctive desire to fall under once more and escape the discomfort. The inability to slip away meant her only choices were to endure, or confront the issue in the realm of the woken. Coming closer to a state of functional awareness, she recognized the ache as being the same she felt before passing out after Latonya left her.

After Latonya left me...

The rest of the memories returned to her. She had joined an adventuring team, gotten sent to conduct reconnaissance, bumped into a newly-deceased ghost, bumped into a beast that wanted to turn her into a ghost, accepted possession by the ghost in order to beat the beast, then allowed the ghost to remain in control until they had completed her team's mission to defend the settlement. After that, Latonya had returned control to Millia, everything turned into pain, and... that was the last thing she could remember.

Curious as to what had happened since then, Millia slowly lifted her eyelids. She wasn't where she remembered collapsing. She had been outside, near a gap between two buildings, under the night sky. Now she was laid supine, staring at a ceiling. To one side was a window, letting in what must have been the warm hues of a sunrise. From what she could see without moving too much, she was in someone's bedroom. Not her own, though.

She was not alone. Rolling her head to one side, an action that her neck punished her for, Millia spied a pair of figures. One was Latonya - still spectral, by the look of her - and the other was the oni that Millia recalled seeing on the battlefield. The duo caught Millia's motion and rose from their seats by the wall. They moved to stand over one side of the bed.

"Hey, you're awake!" an upbeat Latonya said. She gave Millia a soft, congratulatory slug in the shoulder before remembering why Millia was lying there.

The oni said nothing, but by the look on her face, Millia did not feel that she shared Latonya's joy. Up close, she was as big as Millia would have guessed. Her head and shoulders stood taller than Latonya, and Millia was only barely taller than Latonya herself. Unscrupulous, jet-black hair cascaded from the oni's head, framing her hostile expression and two red horns. She wore a sleeveless vest, unbuttoned to display her bandeau and red abdomen, and a pair of harem pants. A coiled chain peeked from behind her far hip, and Millia could guess what was affixed to one end.

"Where are we?" Millia croaked. She made the unpleasant discovery that her lungs and abdominals ached as much as everything else.

"Easy there," Latonya cautioned. "This is one of the settlement's residences. I don't know who it belongs to, but I have to guess that they wouldn't mind it being borrowed by one of the ladies that saved their town from the fuvea onslaught." She pointed celebratory finger guns at Millia and winked.

"If you're feeling generous enough to give her credit," the oni muttered. Her mood was in stark contrast to Latonya's glee.

"Oh hush, Bounmy." The ghost elbowed the red-skinned woman. The motion had no noticeable effect on the oni, and Millia wondered if that would have been any different if Latonya still had a body.

Millia looked to the big woman. "Did I do something to offend you? If so, I'm sorry."

"No, Millia, you didn't-" Latonya was cut off when Bounmy raised a silencing hand.

"Now hold on. I want to hear it from her for myself." The oni leaned in close to Millia, resting a fist on the bed. It could have been to support herself, but those better acquainted with Bounmy would know that she was doing it to intimidate Millia; letting the dip in the mattress inform the cow girl of how much weight was behind the oni's arm if she got an answer she didn't like.

"Did you kill the commander?" Bounmy's eyes bored into Millia's.

"Kill whom?" Millia asked before remembering that the answer outright would not matter, seeing as she had never killed anyone. Heck, she hadn't even been the one in control when she slaughtered the fuvea.

Bounmy did not waver. She raised a finger at Latonya. "Commander Orde. Did you kill her?"

"What? No. She was a ghost when I first met her. Besides, I don't think I could have killed her even if I wanted to." Having seen Latonya in action, Millia was convinced that one would have to have the absolute drop on the woman if they had any hopes of successfully murdering her.

"Are you happy now?" Latonya asked impatiently. She reached for the oni's shoulder to pull her out of Millia's personal space, but her hand just passed through. Bounmy pulled back anyway. "I already told you, I don't know what killed me, but I'm sure it wasn't Millia. I was just walking through the woods, and after I spoke with her, she made me realize I was no longer in my body."

Bounmy looked back to Millia, still unconvinced. "So long as you don't remember the moment of your ****, it could have been anyone. Perhaps you crossed paths with your own assassin before she could make it out."

"I'm not even going to entertain this conversation anymore," Latonya said with a sigh, pinching her brow. "We'll retrieve my body and submit it for autopsy. Until then, I don't want you treating Millia as anything less than a fellow commando. And Millia - I'm sorry to ask anything of you, I know you're still recovering - but would you mind giving us those coordinates?"

"Sure thing," Millia affirmed. With a wince, she pulled out her smart device. She had taken down the coordinates for Latonya's body before they had gone for help and ran into the fuvea. "Here," she offered the device to Bounmy.

The oni referenced the display, taking down the geographic information for herself. "I've passed it along to some others for retrieval. I suppose it's rather good timing with the cleanup crew here."

Millia's brows rose. "Already? That was quick."

The cleanup crews were the teams responsible for clearing away anything that might be hazardous after a big enough battle. Having teams of adventurers of varying sizes galivanting about the universe, getting into potentially huge scuffles with evil created a need for someone to deal with the aftermath. After every bug invasion, corporate war, or even say, fuvea raid, bodies tended to linger. The gratitude of any locals returning to their homes could quickly spoil if they were left to deal with the leviathan carcass bobbing in their harbour. Most anyone could handle removing the remains of a fair-sized animal from their yard, but for the bigger jobs, the cleanup crews were called in.

What surprised Millia though, was how quickly they had arrived. Sobrihiri was relatively close to tamed space, but it still took time to organize the appropriate resources for a cleanup job. She had passed out in the early evening and it was only just morning now.

"Quick?" Latonya raised a brow of her own. "How long do you think it's been? You slept the day away. That's sunset out there."

"Oh..." Millia swallowed this. "What happened to me? After you ceded my body back, everything hurt like mad."

"One of my commandos is rather knowledgeable about the properties of the undead. We had them look you over when we were trying to figure out how to help you." It was then that Latonya took on a guilty look. "I may have pushed you a little too hard when I had the reigns. Oops." She offered a meek shrug. "Sorry."

"So that was just the physical toll catching up with me?" Millia clarified. Latonya nodded. "No wonder. It felt like I had run the final fitness trial at the academy before I had any training. Twice. But wait, what about my..." Millia pulled up her shirt to look at her side where she had been hit by the fuvea tail. The flesh there was discoloured but only vaguely so. If she had not known better, she would have thought it was an injury that she had sustained weeks ago. She realized it did not give her any trouble when she moved; even if everything else did.

"According to our expert, a consensual possession can bolster the - what was the word they used? 'Vitality' - of the host."

"And that means I can heal faster?"

"Suppose so," Latonya shrugged. "I think they implied that it could improve speed, stamina, and strength as well."

Millia had no trouble believing that. The adventurer academy had seen to it that she graduated in a fine state of physical fitness, but some of the things she had seen Latonya do with her body yesterday looked like feats only achievable with two Millias.

The cow girl attempted to shift on the bed and was rewarded with another full-body throb. "Would it be too much to ask you to jump in again and spare me any more of this?"

Latonya raised her hands in a declining gesture. "One of my healers cast a recovery spell on you. Without disruption, you should be fit enough to move about in an hour or two. I think I'm going to let that work its magic."

Millia adopted a disappointed expression, but did not press.

"We're going to give you some peace and quiet while you rest. Come find us when you're better." Latonya spurred Bounmy toward the door where the oni threw one last scrutinizing look over her shoulder.