Candy [Mura, Stella]

Mura looked plenty annoyed enough, so watching Stella appear so apologizing angered him even further. It wasn’t even her damn fault.

“Oh, would you please… you’re not even in the wrong, so just raise your head, already…!”

Sure, his sword was now broken… but he could ask Akira for help on that matter. The lad appeared to have all the money in the world these days – he could afford to hire a smith or someone-

… Who on earth would want to reforge this weapon? It was still a missing museum artifact! If anything, he should’ve just handed it back- no, no, Kyūken would never allow that. Shit… so, so, was he supposed to fix it himself? How?! Argh, just thinking about it was tedious… Akira could at least help him out. Tell him who to contact and shit. At this rate, Mura was already a leg deep in the criminal world as a one-time burglar – might as well make use of black lines under the table to cover his tracks.

But it had nothing to do with Stella.

“Uh… mhm,” Mura hummed before picking up his candy, taking a few pieces and holding the bag over to her, “… Where’d your axe go? It was here a moment ago- did you shrink it? Is that a Quincy skill, too? Thinking about it… a previous Quincy I met was able to summon a bow and arrows made of boxing gloves. So you shrink your weapons instead of sheathing them?”

Slick strategy. “I’d never be able to predict what weapon you’d draw, if so. What’s with all these cool techniques your organization’s got? Can I learn some of them?”

Obviously, he was asking for the impossible, but Meninas might’ve been too reserved to stay around for more questions from him after their last duel. Stella could expand his knowledge about Quincies a bit more, which he assumed she was… he could tell that her dash technique was similar to Meninas. And she used the same red vein aura as Meninas.

It was worth a shot.

That bracelet… it apparently stored her weapon, if what he saw was trustworthy. The bracelet held a cross that drew in Reishi from around them… not just her own. Mura could only control his own Reishi, not the Reishi in the atmosphere or area around him. Maybe that, too, was a Quincy technique. These Quincies sounded skilled and disciplined to the letter, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit inspired by them.

But she mentioned that it wasn’t, likely, trainable… or learnable. Apparently, it depended on heritage – if there was a Quincy down his family tree, he’d probably know. Unless they kept it a secret, but why? Like… they didn’t sound like trouble. The Vandenreich was pretty known. Prestige also befell them. So, Mura did not have any Quincy blood in him. “Not that I know of. I mean, we’ve been around for ages, maybe there’s one… somewhere? Maybe? I don’t think there is- argh, forget it. I have skills-“

“That you suck at-“

“SHUT! UP!” Mura quickly shut the crap out of the butting ghost who thought he could throw in another remark, causing said spirit to back off awkwardly. “I take it that Quincies… aren’t exactly native to this country?”

German? Neither Mura nor Kyūken spoke that language, so it definitely had nothing to do with them. No Quincy skills for them to learn, after all – that was a shame… but shit, he possessed a lot of Spiritual Prowess anyway. He’d probably manage. “Stella does sound foreign, but Germany is… far away from here,” he added his own two cents, probably unneeded but he wanted to share his thoughts, “Or maybe I just don’t travel enough. Funny.”

He finally got to eating his candy… it was so sweet. Sour. Kind of refreshing, but also with a kick to each gummy bear, gum, caramel and orb he crushed with his teeth. He held the bag towards Stella and offered her whatever she could grab, since she probably wanted some pieces too. “Sorry about Kyūken, he’s… hard to deal with.”

“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! I CAN’T BELIEVE YO- y-you know what? Nevermind… this is below me…” the beyond exasperated ghost groaned, floating away with his Chain of Fate tightening its grip around the broken Harukami’s hilt, “… Bastards…”

“If you’re a Quincy too… do you know a Meninas? I met her recently, and you kinda look similar to her.”

I mean… Japan’s a funny tourist attraction for some people. Stella likely didn’t… live here, did she? He wouldn’t think so, but it could be the case. Either way, it didn’t really matter that much to him – Quincies sounded like a group far beyond his family tree, and thus he had no hopes of developing Quincy powers in the long run. Take the loss like a man, Mura.

“Oh, you just looked a bit like her. Similar hair color, similar face, not-at-all-similar heights-“

“Similar bust-“

“-Nobody cares, Kyūken. Seriously, he’s just trying to provoke you, ignore him and he’ll go away… gee, I hope.”

“The both of you… darn troglodytes…”

Toxic rage like that was impressive to turn the cheek to. Kyūken had no patience for the two of them, constantly trying to anger both the forbearing swordsman and the strange lumberjoe. All because of a fucking rusted toothpick of a sword. “Yeah, she visited our dojo once. We held a duel there-“

“And guess who lost?! Yeah, exactly, that limpdick over there – woe to his name.”

“...” Mura could honestly fucking kill Kyūken at this rate… but how do kill a ghost? “I gotta ask Veralia how to do what Hollows do and eat ghosts like you…”

“Eat my ass…”

This dumb ghost was really testing his patience, but Mura kept his focus solely on Stella for now. Completely blocking out the sword ghost from view and ear. Instead, Stella apologized once more, stating that she’d be more than willing to help repay for breaking it. “I don’t really think… I don’t know. I just need it reforged, somewhat – you… wouldn’t happen to know any smiths nearby?”

While steel weapons of this kind were mostly made as ceremonial ornaments, who could reforge such an old, old, super-dumb old sword? Not to mention, it was a famous sword from China! No shot the smith wouldn’t be caught under the radar if they touched it. “Vandenreich… do they have anyone working with tools like these? Maybe there’s someone there who can help me.”

Walk. He wanted to walk and talk, get his blood flowing away from his veiny head.