(Radish: in honor of this awesome fic, the information will be brought to you by… COFFEE!

Radish wearing a coffee bag on her head: Now we’re set. Anyway! The fic is set after Stea goes boom, and before they get eated by the whale. Because I was dissatisfied with how short the manga was. It bothered me. Seriously shnapping bothered me.)

A white head shifted under the blanket. Orange eyes lifted, glancing around carefully before settling on a mug with a slight chip in the handle, and flowers painted on it. Faint steam wafted from it, and the head disappeared under the blanket once again, being as quiet as possible. If there was one thing that Shiki had learned from years of being with Shina, the most important thing was the coffee.

Never, under any circumstances, talk to, poke, smile at, breathe on, or go anywhere near Shina before she’s had any coffee. In the books Shiki liked to read, it once said that music soothed the savage beast. Shiki usually respected Shakespeare for knowing what he was writing about, but on this one matter, the two disagreed.

In Shiki’s opinion, music only served to aggravate aforementioned beast more. If anything could tame a monster on the rampage? Coffee. It had to be coffee, the wonderful thing that made Shina approachable in the early hours of morning. If every drop of it wasn’t required towards making Shina civil, Shiki would’ve liked to try a little.

Finally, the short boy stood up and stretched, the sleeves of his oversized jacket overshadowing his wild mane of pure-white hair, complete with long feathery bangs, which hid one eye and overshadowed the other. With a sigh, he glanced at the untouched cup of coffee.

A bandit approached. “Hey, look, somebody left their kid here.” He jeered, poking his dagger at Shiki’s face. “What’cha gonna do, cry?”

“I refuse.” Shiki folded his arms.

“What?”

“I refuse to cry unless there’s suitable reason for it.” He stared down the blade of the dagger. “Nice blade you have there… is that an O-part?” he enquired, completely nonchalant. He gave it a tentative sniff and raised an eyebrow, invisible under his long bangs. “…Hmm, raw iron ore, not an O-part, looks sharp but I’d say this piece of junk won’t last one hit.”

“Really? Let’s test it out then.” The bandit swung the knife, aiming for Shiki’s head.

A long, tentacle-like appendage sporting a wicked ivory blade slapped down on the dagger, shattering it. “Knew it.” Shiki sighed, lowering his tail. “Junk.” The white blade had black spirals on it, and had a deadly point. “Come on, get out of here before Shina wakes up, and believe me, she’ll do a lot worse than just break whatever weapon you pull out.”

The bandit fled, screaming hysterics and leaving behind the broken knife handle. Shiki knelt and picked it up, looking at it. His tail disappeared into a white mist. “Sheesh, low class. Not even enough Spirit to use an O-part, even if he knew the handle was one… sticking such a badly made blade on it completely ruined the effect. Let’s see what it can really do…” The Spirit that had been drawn from the bandit was still floating around. Carefully, Shiki sent a little into the sword.

A flaming blade appeared from the handle- it was a sword hilt, not a daggers’! It was supposed to be used with no blade, because it could make its own. The blade was small and disappeared quickly, but Shiki didn’t mind- it was because of the bandit’s weak Spirit. “Shina can use this.” He ran his fingers over it. “Pretty thing…” he muttered.

A pale hand, wearing a long, black glove that covered only the last three fingers snaked up from the heaped blanket near the edge of the clearing. As if searching, it wandered across the top of the stump until it found the mug, which it led under the blankets. A quiet slurp followed.

Instantly, Shiki knew it was safe enough to approach. “’Morning Shina!” he walked over.

A girl sat up, rubbing her eyes with the hand that held the coffee cup. The gloves had golden embroidered borders, and a ruby gem set in the back of each. “Nng… Shiki how do you stay so perky in the morning?” She yawned, her long reddish hair moving out of her face. Unlike Shiki, Shina’s hair always seemed to keep away from her face, revealing her dark brown eyes and tanned skin.

He wondered if it had anything to do with coffee intake. Eager to pacify his traveling companion, he presented her with the O-part sword and explained the appearance of the bandit.

“You’re really careless, Shiki. With people like that, you don’t even need to use your tail. You can just break the blade with that kick I taught you and scare him off that way.” She examined the sword. “You really have an eye for this kind of stuff, don’t you? This thing is good quality.”

And just imagine, a few minutes earlier she was an unmoving, irritable lump under the blankets. Ah, the miracle known as coffee.