[RL with Minato] (Backdated to yesterday if that's OK)

[screwloose]

The lobby of the White House was a shambles, but the doors were well sealed and none of the zombies roaming around outside could get in. Stein glanced out the windows and watched them shambling around, thinking with wry amusement that it looked like any other day in the seat of his country's government.

Which was part of why he followed the Grim Reaper instead of bothering with mortal politics. Let the humans take care of themselves. He had witches to worry about.

Normally, when he could go to his own world without going insane.

But right now he was waiting for a teenaged boy who apparently had several personas. He couldn't wait to get a look at his soul. And more. Good thing he and Birkin had taken the time to bring some laboratory equipment and set it up in one of the rooms. They were going to get good use of it today.

Comments

yeah XD;

[dormition]

"I... didn't survive it, in a way," Minato confessed. Hands still in his pockets, he leaned back against the corner of some shelving, propping himself up. The relaxed posture, the pretense - it was innate. "I signed a contract. I ended up dying, in the end. Someone on the community brought me back."

Some people would've thought it freeing to say all that, but to Minato it just felt vaguely dangerous. He'd been living with that for over a year now, a long year in which he'd had no access to the community, to hardly any of his friends, and was just tired of the reality of it. There wasn't anything liberating in saying it out loud; he wanted to leave it behind.

[screwloose]

Stein considered that. He wondered what would happen to a child that would create such a malleable soul, and he could see why Minato almost didn't seem to care about anything.

No, it wasn't quite a lack of caring. But everything certainly seemed to roll off of his back.

"Did dying...free you from Death?" he asked. They'd gotten quite off topic now, but Stein didn't mind. He was very curious about this odd boy.

[dormition]

To Minato, it was all the same topic, wrapped up together in one year.

"There were thirteen Shadows that we fought throughout the year," he told him, diverging for a moment to provide context. "Bigger and more powerful than the rest. They followed the Arcana, and when we got to the last one, it came out of me."

[screwloose]

"Bigger and more powerful, like Naoto's 'Domination Machine'?" Stein asked, referring to the big shadow that Naoto's shadow had created to try to stop the investigation team from getting to him in time.

"Or are we talking about something else entirely?"

[dormition]

He shook his head. "Something else. I think I still have surveillance footage of the first one if you want to see it later. They're all gone, though... they have to be."

He frowned just thinking about it. No, he was sure. His sacrifice was for a reason.