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Owner Pose
Dimokratia Dimo didn't even really wait or consider, joined by Princess Futaba Nuki in the chamber of baths and saunas within the Shrine of Adversity, a room with rising tiers of mineral bath pools, a waterfall, and wooden walkways over a pair of bubbling hot cauldrons of steamy water that appear bottomless. The air is thick with steam, creaking wood, and water slopping and sloshing from the waterfall, and smells of minerals and heat and dampness.

Dimo, thigh deep in the large pool fed by the waterfall, with silver half-capes of gossamer silver floating at the top of the waterline, sets the princess down fondly besides her.

"Do you want to stay in the baths, to speak, or would you like to go someplace else? There are other locations, Futaba. Whatever is your preference."
Futaba Nuki After what was supposed to be some kind of sauna challenge, Futaba's feeling rather conflicted. On one hand, she did just get soundly beaten at something that she's never tried before without making much of a strong impression to the person she called out. On the other hand...

She's still feeling pretty good just lounging around with Dimo, content to just lay around for  a bit in that bath after being set down. She's still a little woozy from having passed out for however long she was out, anyway, and she stretches out fully in that water before slouching again with another content noise coming out of her.

"I think... I'm okay to stay in here for a bit longer! Just to take a little breather from the workout." Futaba replies with a hearty chuckle. "Anything you wanna talk about? I'm actually kind of curious myself... How /did/ you get so strong, anyway? I haven't seen a lot of shows or anything about you, but you're already crazy strong!"
Dimokratia Sitting at the side of the pool, Dimo settles and smiles, idle by the water. A slow raise of her leg out of the surface of the pool, when seated, leaves trails flowing down the sides of her ankle. "Then let's stay here longer and enjoy ourselves. Don't worry about the challenge, it was charming. You wanted to get to know me, and I wanted to get to know you. What better way than becoming physical?"

She makes it sounds so normal. Perhaps, to her, it was. "Though, I prefer a bath of more... viscosity." She admits, chuckling and dropping her expression to run fingers through the water and leave ripples to pulse against the waterfall's pouring wave-motions.

"How did I become so strong. Well, I have been growing for some time, and I started from a very high point. My mother is herself truly divine, in the old way, a star at the center of our society. My father is himself wrapped and built with sacred truths. That they came themselves together, and my sister and I are the result from their couplings and wants. Are your parents already immensely great?"

Dimo turns to Futaba, her dry skin-heat leaving little moisture on her body. Pale blue optics gaze long at the dazed tanuki royal. "The body I was granted to start with, was incredible. With it, I must respect it, and myself, by becoming greater still."
Futaba Nuki The temptation to just float around in that pool is strong. Saunas are rarely uncomfortable, and Futaba's in good company that she wouldn't mind just loitering here with for far longer. Luckily, Dimo seems ready to oblige, and Futaba just lets herself relax with the water washing all the sweat and fatigue right off of her.

"/You/ wanted to get to know /me/? Huhuhu... Wait. Because of my title, or because of something else?" Although there's a hint of apprehension in her tone with that question, there's also a fair bit of pride in Futaba's voice at the notion of Dimo specifically being interested in her. "That's... Well, still good! I just hope I didn't let you down with my performance earlier."

"And viscosity's... Wait. I know this one." Channeling her inner TV-watching prowess, Futaba comes up with "Like water and corn starch?" while looking... Actually, she doesn't look too proud of herself for getting that one. It's not a particularly exciting fact, and the point goes right over her head.

What she's really interested in, though, is Dimo's source of strength. Futaba lays on her front in the water while drifting slowly towards her, dipping in briefly to let the water wash through her hair and spreading it wide and out from her usual ponytail. It's actually really long!

"So your parents were high up in society, too... And then they had you, and.. Eh?" The question about her own lineage has Futaba nodding, although she doesn't sound nearly as pleased so much as she's still mostly focusing on just studying Dimo and somehow feeling self-conscious about being stared at. "Y-yeah. They were... Are the king and queen of our people, and I got all the perks of being the next in line and getting the-"

She waves her hands a bit. "'Divine Blessing'. Sure made people love me a lot, but... Wrong reasons, you know?" She actually pouts a bit at that, then dunks her head back into the water briefly. "That's why I have to earn my way in here."
Dimokratia Dimo, by the waterside, nods her head in time. Languid, for Futaba's questions, but present. "I did want to get to know you. You changed yourself several times in the fight, were open-minded about who and what I am, and want to challenge yourself to grow. Why wouldn't I be interested in you?"

The thought of 'letting Dimo down' gets more light, warm amusement, and a dry-warm hand extends to touch a warm tip to Futaba's nose and linger there, the water steamed off her hands in moments. Radiating from the curl of Dimo's palm, Futaba's face dries in the flight of water into the air.

"You tried, so you didn't let me down. We are together blessed with a similar kind of need, hmm? To be incredible, and complex, and blessed, for a people. Your ability is not like mine, though. Tell me of it."

Sprawling out on her side by the edge of the pool, following the gentle curve with the concave of her lay. Left fist propping up the side of her head, her right sweeps out, beckoningly, to draw Futaba's story from her. "You gained the lessons of a child at your home. Your blessing is not something to pay off, simply something to humbly accept and become greater than."
Futaba Nuki "Huhu... Yeah, you got a point there. I just figured because you were already cooler and stronger, you'd be more interested in the other bigger names around the Paladins." Feeling her ego sufficiently stroked even more, Futaba floats along and stops briefly at the finger on her nose, just staring at the digit and squinting after a moment to let her eyes readjust. Noticing the sudden-ish drying of her face, she holds her hand near Dimo's experimentally to see if tehe same happens there, then pulls herself up onto the edge of the pool to join her.

"Or... Even someone in the Concord or Watch, if you really wanted to stretch your legs. But... Thanks! For picking me to hang out with instead, I mean." She adds with a confident little chuckle, almost sounding bashful while leaning back on her palms after a little while longer.

"You've got that right, yeah... I mean, it's not like I don't love everyone back home, or that I want to the powers I've got. I just... It doesn't feel right for everyone to call me so great before I've even done anything big yet." She explains while looking Dimo over curiously again, leaning over to give her a few idle taps on the leg to listen for the sound.

She's really not used to cool robotic people, so of course she's going to experiment.

"My powers are... I can transform! I can get big, small, turn into stuff... Oh. This might be easier to show than tell." Pulling her legs out of the water as well, Futaba studies Dimo a little bit longer before engaging in TANUKI MAGIC and mimicking Dimo's appearance. Aside from the telltale leaf on her forehead, the gold bracer around her right wrist, and being Futaba sized, she actually looks eerily similar!

"And I can turn into stuff, too, so I could make myself real hard or soft real quick!" Futaba's voice is still the same as usual, of course, as is her complete lack of awareness when it comes to innuendo.
Dimokratia "Because I am cooler and stronger, hmm?" Dimo asks, slow and amused. "Permit me to provide an alternate perspective: I am strong-" Dimo rests a hand across the center of her chest, stretching to bridge collar with an extension of thumb and pinky. "-because of my reliable ability to see the merit of invention in others, those newer than me and those older than me. If I believed that only those older than me could teach me, then I would close myself to everything newer, wouldn't I?"

Smiling in her sidelean, the bridging hand lifts and rotates, reaching to touch Futaba on the nose again. "You're welcome. Spend... as long as you like, thinking about how that makes you feel. Being on someone's mind constantly is being familial, to me." The tall synthetic woman jokes, laughing easily.

Dimo listens to Futaba's problems, her story, and resettles her bracing fist to linger fully extended before the Tanuki girl. Her answer, the completing of her observation, flows as she smirks down at the approach and leg-tap.

"The past is something you receive through your culture. Your parents, the forming of your body, the teaching you receive after. Society. After, it is up to you to grow and drive yourself to further complexities and abilities."

Dimo remains dryly hot, the sauna still warded away from her by a palpable inner heat that radiates out from her otherwise cool-toned synthetic exterior. The glinting-pale skin simulacra shell from her face down is finely detailed, but more like complex scales or carapace than any kind of skin. The leg shifts, minute adjustments to the plates working like muscle contractions, the highly expressive shift and motion of a living thing solely echoed in the synthetic. The 'dark' of her legs, carbon black, actually is more like a polymer or flesh, the lightly-tacky feeling of warm rubber or a hardened oil filler. While her 'skin' glistens and glints in the light and reflects water with a scintillating rainbow across her torso and arms, the 'clothing' is more true to flesh, the not-quite opaque material revealing cords of cabling, near-surface joints, and thick structural posts no doubt filled with more things. Dimo lifts the poked leg and adjusts it naturally, sitting up as the Tanuki gets out of the water. She had been showing off, clearly, presenting and smiling and letting the shapeshifter take her time filling her head up with thinking about her. Now, the part Dimo had been expecting:

Exactly the assumption, or at least some sort, that Futaba does - closer to herself. Dimo splits into a wide grin, rising to her own feet, and seeing a fair replica of herself.

"Ah, you do the outside so well, Futaba, it's adorable. You really do think clearly about me." Dimo praises, stepping up to herself and patting the copy on the shoulders, letting her hands drift to pick up her opposite's hands and squeeze them, and then down to Futaba's significantly enhanced waistline, to pat Futaba's lower back. Leaning in, close, Dimo is all amusement and throaty humor, warm like sunbeams poured into the ear. Even faced with herself, she treats Futaba like a little sister.

"The feeling is just at your skin, isn't it? It's not inside you at all. You're warm. But why? You don't know."

"I'll show you." Dimo purrs, and seizes the tanuki-of-the-Silver copy by the base of her new jellyfish trails of silver 'soft metal', and pivoting once to hammertoss the eight feet of copied metal and warm humming (ver False) through the wall of the sauna, and crash into--!!

Futaba, however she lands, lands in a starting-to-become-steamy-because-now-there-is-a-hole-from-the-sauna-into-it bamboo forest, with a single central road under an old Torii gate. The road continues on for a while until there's a more normal door in the middle of the air -- one of the shrine's trick rooms for appropriate duel sensibilties.
Futaba Nuki Studying Dimo's movements closely once again, Futaba nods quickly as that alternative is given, watching that hand, then mimicking the hand movement with her own hand and chest. It works, of course, because she's taken Dimo's form, but it still doesn't feel quite the same.

"I think I get you there... Stuff to learn from the newbies and the vets, right? I remember reading something about-" She snickers at that touch on the nose, wriggling in place a bit. "-building off the past to improve way faster in the present. I think it had something to do with... Sports? Or something. And I guess I did learn a good amount of stuff from everything I've watched my parents do. And... Heck, even from fighting everyone I did back home."

Getting a better look at Dimo, Futaba's own transformation shifts subtly. Slightly longer here, a bit thinner there, corrections to how shiny or matte one part should look. It's relatively automatic in the sense that she doesn't have to think too actively to change those things, but there's still some sense of the whole thing feeling off once Dimo gets a hold of her even if it looks right (aside from the usual leaf and bracer giving away Futaba's disguise).

"Adorable? W-wait, this is supposed to be cool!" She complains with half-serious annoyance and half-amused giggling, both trying to be taken seriously and also sounding pleased at being praised. It's a delicate balance that she fails at spectacularly, letting out a bit of a surprised noise even while taking that hand-holding and back-patting in stride.

"Eh? Inside... I mean, I'm heavier inside right now. That's something, right?" She also doesn't quite get the facial expressions right, but that's all part of learning the art as she goes. Now isn't the time to learn, though, as Dimo catches her off guard when she flings her right through the wall with a startled screech, crashing through it and fumbling her way through it into a skidding slide on her hands and feet.

Luckily, that seems to get Futaba fired up rather than frustrated, even if she's a little shaken after the fact. "That did feel off, yeah... You're not just heavy inside, are you? You're more like..." From that stance, she leaps forward into a sprint towards Dimo, opting to keep this transformed form for now to get a better feel for the gait, the length of her arms, and trying to feel out how those trails should move even while trying to get a good hold Dimo herself around the same trails.

"Like this, and... Hup!" Her throwing style isn't quite the same, though, as Futaba falls backwards with both legs kicking upwards for a more airborne toss, aiming to hurl Dimo through the air and towards the gate itself as though this might be some kind of slam-master'ing contest!
Dimokratia 'I'm heavier inside, right? That's something?'

Dimo strides imperiously through the hole that Futaba's copied form smashed moments before, wearing her confidence in the sway of her casual steps, the languidity of her leap into the center of the path in a single long sailing motion unaided by anything and leaving two silver trails rippling like gossamer through the air. She wears her power in her shoulders, arms wide, hands open, while Futaba closes.

"Heavy. Light. These are needs. You are beyond that barrier. You are different inside. Why? What purpose does the difference solve?"

Futaba is close, and like the waterfall's warm-to-hot sauna water before: she's cold - freezing, achingly empty of heat and approaching Dimo subjects her copy to a sweltering, bone-melting 'sense', a solar warmth that turns all of her internal guesses to jelly.

There's something she's *missing*, and it's turning her to be putty to try and be so cold! Dimo explains:

"You guess at how hard I am. Guess at what goes in me. Do you know what goes in yourself? Think about it."

That threat, of melting in Dimo's presence, only grows sharper when she goes for the grab on her trailing tails of silver, and they give her purchase - while they suddenly wrap around her arms like snakes, splitting into thinner pseudopods to coat and stick the copy-Dimo to them. Dimo wants to be close to Futaba, wants to deliver the lesson.

Wrenched around and trying to stick while Futaba tries to throw her, Dimo's goal is all... 'cerebral'. Reaching high while she's grabbed low, Dimo grips with stretched fingers and palms Futaba-Dimo's skull again, this time applying more pressure, a pleasantly crush-compacting force that buckles such gooey-warm insides trying to imagine themselves hard.

Wrenching there, Futaba aiming to throw, Dimo trying to turn the throw into a skull-goopifying hold!

Eventually, the struggle breaks and she's thrown aside, off towards the gate.
Futaba Nuki "Needs...? Barrier? Uhh. I mean, you're all metallic and stuff, and metal's supposed to be..." Futaba stops, letting her head catch up with the rest of her body while she's still wrestling with that burning feeling that hits her each time she gets too close to Dimo. It's not a bad feeling by any means, and that heat has her wanting more of it, but...

She needs to overcome this feeling. If she doesn't, how is she supposed to catch up and become more like Dimo? It gets harder to think the longer she's forced into that hold, too, arms held in place by the snake-like appendages wrapping around Futaba's arms.

"What does in...? Uh. Food? Wait, but I also... Wait, no. Not food. Um. Hold on, I've..." She's struggling a lot with this. Critical thinking isn't necessarily a weak point for Futaba, but she's definitely more used to things of the less cerebral variety, and certainly more used to things in the more literal and physical sense.

For better or for worse, Futaba's head is just that much harder as a copy-Dimo. It means she doesn't have to focus on pain as much, but it also means the spreading warmth hits her even harder without something to distract her from it. She's panting heavily by the time she finally manages that toss, still panting, still pressing one hand on the ground to steady herself as she finally manages to look back up at Dimo again.

"I don't... What do you mean? I need..." Heat? No. She's gotten heat plenty before, but she needs more of that feeling that had sweltered through her moments ago. There's frustration and longing in her voice as she pulls herself back up, one hand still clutched against her head as she notices the differences between herself copying Dimo and the real thing even more.

Her own metallic body is cold. Her metallic body is warm. "I need... Your heat? I need to warm myself up with... Uh." She's still trying to figure it out, but she starts remembering things that had happened just a short while ago.

"I need to become more like you? More... Divine!" It feels right, but Futaba still feels like she's missing something. The only way she'll know is to get in close again and see where that takes her. Adjusting her form again, she sprints at Dimo, running on both her hands, feet, and even letting the trailing tendrils get in on the running action to push her a little bit faster, all to make sure Futaba's moving as fast as she can before she flings herself at Dimo.

She's far lighter this time, though, as though she's shed that weight to make room for more of that warmth. It might not be what she technically needs, but it sure as hell is what she wants now.
Dimokratia The thing that Futaba says, like a switch or a pilot light, ignites something in her. A tiny bit of her own heat.

'More... Divine!'

It makes sense to her, settles into her, over her. She understands the physicality of it, takes ownership of the whole motion - with Dimo's lips, and throat, and her best guess at the kind of voicebox situation an eight foot tall machine champion. She speaks the words as close to Dimo as she can get, and wants it, and means it.

It's affirming, the throb of her head declares, and inside her chest that pilot light is warm. It pulses in her Dimo-like arms, adapts quickly - intuitively, easier than any machine before, built to morph and change, sinewy for a moment, slithery the next. Her legs pulse with the twang of spring-like tension, the firm tautness of moving cables retaining energy, unifying the whole body motion towards one purpose. The jellyfish trails sizzle with a slopping, gooey warmth that touches surfaces in a pouring-hard non-Newtonian way, a limb as conscious as one with muscles but without limits or even natural form, pure possibility.

Futaba closes, watching Dimo. The original remains, humming and laughing in cheer while she rises underneath the Torii gate, slow and purposeful, not a wasted motion, not a part out of place yet swaying, tantalizing in dynamic flow, with the silver trails hovering and lifting. As if caught by the wind, or the overexpressive adjustments of her hips, or some sub-intelligence of their own, Dimo's both extend through the air like pseudopoda and sway in weightless atmospheric shifts - and there is no 'end' to it, the entire trail a flow-out of her own body, a filling or organ of some sort.

But they are warm, and only that little pilot light of divinity in Futaba's chest is warm at all. Still, running at Dimo, seeing her move has an effect. Being Dimo-like, and learning in every possible way her ability could plus the crackling nerve-fire of being the sole object of Dimo's attention, is educating. Drawing near her heat, she can see the center of Dimo's chest reconfigure, plates adjusting and carbon-black fill shifting and stretching around a light within her breast. Immediately, the heat is unbearable.

Immediately it is as if all of Futaba's 'blood' or mech-fluids and her trails were set to rolling boil all at once.

And it feels incredible, spilling out of her constantly.

"This is my heart." Dimo answers, breathing low, her hum louder than her words. "The heart given to me by my mother. The heart of Her children." She doesn't even attack. She just opens her hands welcomingly and allows her radiance out. "Filled with Her light, the Silver pumps from within it. And you're so close. Do you..." Her laughter is a loud crackle. "... want your own?"
Futaba Nuki Little by little, things start making sense. Although the limbs aren't hers, the movements feel a little more natural, like things are starting to fit together. Futaba still stumbles, of course, clearly used to her own gait at five something rather than Dimo's eight, but she's becoming more comfortable even as the heat becomes more unbearable the closer she gets.

Nevertheless, that heat is exactly what she needs. It's what she wants, and when Dimo opens up her chest to reveal that light, there's a moment where even Futaba has to slow down a little bit lest she get burnt up from inside and out.

She doesn't stop out of fear, though, but because she wants to feel it longer. Instead of diving at Dimo as she had planned, she trips over her own feet and skids face-first right in front of Dimo, panting more heavily than before as her mind tells her to keep moving while her body screams at her to stop.

"Your heart's... A-and you hold this in you, all the time?" Clawing her weay back up to a prone position, Futaba starts dragging herself closer, sweating, feeling that everpresent burn. Maybe it's a desire for belonging beyond her own home, or maybe it's a desire to achieve something, but whatever it is is enough to get her to take Dimo's hands, one at a time to force herself right back up.

"Give..." That's all Futaba's able to get out of her mouth before she falls right back over, her transformation fading and leaving just a regular tanuki in a sweating heap right in front of Dimo.
Dimokratia Futaba draws close to the sun, and as Icarus, her falsehoods are burned away like wax wings. The magic peels off before the light at Dimo's chest, and the Tanuki reveals her full truth before the solar furnace at the tall woman's brilliant-hot core.

"You feel it. And you crave it. And you know, even this close, you are still fine-" Dimo purr-buzzes, a presence in Futaba's sinuses, her teeth, a crackle in her eyes, a brush against the storm at her forebrain, an all-enveloping warmth that the sauna never reached. 'Fine' is... relative.

It is a physical heat, but much more a mental one. A presence-heat. This close, it is toxins and lies that buckle and wobble and come apart bubble up to the surface, wicking away, dripping down. Unnecessary things. Negative energies. Doubts, feelings of failure, tried-befores, recurring nightmares, formless fears. The unaligned thoughts that were heavy and cold within the skull. These, were heated. These, in the crucible, loosened.

In their place, Dimo, and past her, a thing-Futaba-could-be. Love. Acceptance. Becoming. Growth. Losing nothing but barriers, gaining nothing but complexity and divinity.

"Think about it. Let it sink in. Don't be ashamed, or afraid, but think about it, passionately. Allow yourself to be surprised. Think about me. Think about what you could become. Think about it. I know this is in you, Futaba. I know this is in you, if you think about it."

Hands, filiments of silver, equally gentle, bring Futaba up, to cradle the Tanuki in the glow. The hum is louder than a sound, now, a sensation, a vibration in her nerves, the synapse-field naked and unrestrained. Words come alongside it, with it. Within the hum are more sounds. There is an incredible depth to the buzz, and Futaba rides at the top of it, a seafoam froth on the cusp of a wave, her forebrain presence lifted just a bit clear out of her, like gravity towards the star in Dimo's breast.

The eyes must acclimate to the brightness. A shape, sharp and metallic - the tip of a blade near her tongue. The shape she knows, understands as her eyes adjust - her Dragon Sword!

"If you want the heart of a dragon, and the breath of power to come from within, consume the power and make it yours. Wrap it around your heart and then it and you will be one. And you will be more complex."

"Eat, and grow. You know how, instinctually. I see this, in you. Become more divine."
Futaba Nuki The mental heat sears at every fiber of Futaba's being she confronts everything she wants from Dimo... No, not from Dimo. From herself, certainly aided by what she's seeing of Dimo, but it's ultimately something she wants to become through seeing the differences between them. Being forced to confront all of it, though, also helps her to contextualize all of it, to push that negativity further and further into the background as she instead focuses fully on the ideal of herself and the reality of Dimo rather than just what she's missing in herself.

She just needs to think more about it. She needs to understand it better, and to let that guide her rather than so many what-ifs. She reaches up towards something she can't see, but she can certainly feel as she's brought closer to that glowing hum, that sensation that becomes even harder to ignore if she wanted to in the first place.

There's something familiar, but foreign in front of her. No, inside her, just barely. She recalls the feeling of the blade just from the tip on her tongue alone, partially from wielding it, partially from being morbidly curious about how a magical fire-slinging blade tastes. She remembers being burned by it once before, perhaps coinciding with that curious moment, but the heat isn't a stranger, and it's not something to fear.

She's already felt hotter fires burning her from within just moments ago, after all. Futaba opens wide, and she starts pulling it into herself and absorbing that burning essence, merging it with the heat she can still feel from being in Dimo's presence for so long.
Dimokratia Futaba could be anything. With the Crown Ring, her powers are quite vast, and she draws the power out of it constantly. With the Dragon sword...

It is a power borrowed. Not really hers.

But she had tasted it. Licked it once, and been burned. When she was something that was burned by that heat, it was painful, and tasted like metal and the sizzle of her own tongue.

It was about what she was. Did she taste it as something that could touch fire and be well-kept in it? It was good that she was inquisitive -- but did she express herself, or what she had tricked herself into thinking she was limited to?

A big thought, for Futaba! Dimo helps her, from the cradling arm at the base of her skull, and the sizzle and hum in her skeleton. "Futaba. Be the you that consumes a new heart." She councils, diligent and teaching, out loud. Her voice redoubles its showing in her arm's guidance, the sword heating hotter and hotter into a soft putty. In Dimo's arms, even though Futaba hadn't noticed, she had already become 'something that survived the heat of a star'.

So with a little help, from in her herves and impulses, in her head, around her physlically Dimo guides Futaba through being something else. For a moment, she's two planes of impossible metal, smashing the sword together into a flat pancake. She feels this as metal does, tasting the vibrations of the enchanted blade as it pancakes between the press of Futaba's unyielding slabs. For a moment, she understands every part of the sword perfectly, utterly, and completely. And then, it is unmade between her.

Then, she's a crucible fed by the heat of a star, and the sword falls in, becoming a hot, popping weight. Gathering even the smoke and ashes within her, of the whole of the blade, its history, its gasp of item-spirit becoming snuffed out and burned as a parchment within her. She understands each part as a kiln does, as the porous and heat-resistant furnace bowl she is melts it down into a soup.

Then, she is a press, holding the candle flame of her heart between two pieces of etched metal, her every thought focused on a light, a heat - Dimo, the color of her heart - and filling the mould with the entirety of the the sword, ashes, spirit, and every bit of material consumed and recast.

Then for a moment Futaba is nothing at all, and as she is putting herself together, alone, the thought of her heart, where it goes, is missing. She needs it. She needs a heart - she *must* have one -

And the thing that was created is there.

What must be some time after - the lighting has changed to a far darker shade - Futaba regains full sense of herself. Dimo sits a short distance away, leaning on the Torii gate.

"Are you well, now, Futaba?"
Futaba Nuki The process of integrating the sword into her own being is a complex one. Physically, it's something that shouldn't really be possible, but Futaba's a crafty sort. Even though she's no blacksmith or alchemist or engineer by any means, she's always been putting together weird solutions to things that would, ironically, take her far longer to do if she had stopped think about how those solutions worked.

She doesn't need to think about that now. She has Dimo at her back, her front, above her, and holding her in a place of safety. She just needs to think about doing it.

"It's a... Sword, not a... Heart. But it's going to be part of my...!"

She feels her insides churning. The how if it isn't important, just that it is in order to accomodate the length of the blade as it goes in deeper, easily longer than she is in this form, but never coming back out of her. It just works, and she believes that it will as long as Dimo is with her.

The heat grows, and for a moment, that doubt returns. Did she just do something incredibly stupid? It's too late to back out now, but Futaba doesn't need to, because she knows Dimo is there, and she entrusts her being to her as it becomes part of her, joining her heart and her body until it's just herself and Dimo in that room.

"... Uh? H-hey, Miss Dimo. Did I just... Did I really just eat a sword?" Somehow, she still sounds like she's in disbelief. She knows, but it still sounds weird to say it.

She hasn't fully transformed back by the time she reawakens. Her hair is still brown.
Dimokratia "You did, Futaba." Dimo claps, from her sitting position, a light pat on the hands.

"Congratulations. Now you also have the heart of a dragon. What a truly auspicious first step."