Title: Manic Genius
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress
Characters: Takumi and Ikoma.
Setting: Pre-canon.
Rating: G.
Length: 446 words.
Summary: Takumi could vividly remember the moment when the inspiration struck Ikoma.



Takumi could vividly remember the moment when the inspiration struck Ikoma.

I wonder if I can use this as a basis for a weapon that would kill Kabane, he had mused in the middle of their work day, staring down at the rivet gun in his hands. The excited light that filled his eyes looked a little less than healthy… and Takumi felt his heart immediately sink with an uneasy concern.

Of course he tried to make the most glaringly obvious argument. A weapon designed like that could only be used at point-blank range. If you could get close enough to a Kabane to actually use it, you were pretty much guaranteed to be a dead man before you could even pull the trigger. What was the good of managing to kill one of those monsters if you only ended up becoming one yourself to replace it?

Still, Ikoma would have none of those perfectly reasonable objections. Now that the idea had possessed him, his attention was already lost to the details and calculations surging through his mind, drowning out any counterpoint his worried friend could offer. He dropped his work and ran home that very minute, undoubtedly to throw himself into plotting the first rough draft of a schematic.

Left sitting alone and agape on top of the train they’d been repairing, Takumi could only shake his head and sigh.

Ikoma was definitely crazy. He would get himself killed one of these days if he had his way—although that at least was quite unlikely. It was lucky for him that as a mere steamsmith, no one would ever take his ideas about combating the Kabane seriously. After all, fighting was the duty of the bushi. By spouting off wild aspirations that weren’t even his place to have, all he was really doing was attracting ridicule and making his own life harder.

Some of the other steamsmiths would mutter that Ikoma had a loose screw in his head, but Takumi knew where the real problem lay. The truth was that he had something screwed too tight in his heart. It was a pressure that drove him onward relentlessly, even to the point of irrationality.

Takumi knew the cause of it, too. He had heard the story of Ikoma’s sister—and that was why he knew he had very little chance of changing his friend’s ways. No steamsmith’s tools could reach deep enough to loosen that crushing vise of guilt and sorrow. Ikoma’s fixation would only be cured if he found a way to relieve that pressure himself.

If it ever did manage to happen someday, Takumi just hoped Ikoma would survive it.

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2021 Jordanna Morgan