Quote:Of course! Still, like I said, I'm afraid that he's decided to fix himself pretty firmly as being more likely to go to HiMEland. Which doesn't mean that one or another other people here couldn't volunteer... After all, it'd be a shame to miss out on potential plotlines this interesting.
Ah. My bad. There's the third possiblity, wherein he's working with the White Guardian's chosen insertee as an indie, and the Black thing is, along with the reason named in the last point, there as the equivalent of a rude gesture towards the other side. Which is where I thought of a Nate avatar.
The scary thing is, Drakensis' Buffy might well fit in perfectly.
Quote:No doubt - I was just saying that there's a difference between dealing with a main character vs. someone who is, likely, no more than a background role. And I, alas, am ecchi enough to care.
And Mai will likely show up sometime soon.
Speaking of which, I got ambushed...
Yuuichi snapped awake with a gasp, then glanced around to regain his bearings. After a moment, secure in the knowledge that he was safely in his own room rather than, at best, a hospital somewhere, he let the snatched breath gust out and began trying to remember what had so terrified him. "Some dream," he chuckled.
"I'm afraid not."
"What?" He turned his head to face the voice. The speaker was sitting cross-legged on top of the desk that was supposed to help him with his homework, but which mostly ended up as a flat surface to put paper on... and now that he looked again, the entire room was far too neat.
"The short version is that someone shot you in the head." The intruder was older than he was, though still young - college aged - and probably would have been at least half a head taller if they were standing. His hair was a brown a little lighter than Yuuichi's would have been without the bleach, and long enough that all of it could be pulled cleanly back away from his face, while the eyes behind the wire-framed glasses were blue. The rest of him didn't make as much of an impression - Caucasian features, average build, and dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt with an iguana on it.
"I'm... dead?" As he said it, he realized it felt like the truth. "But why?"
"Well... Destiny." The older of the two made a face, like the word tasted bad, while the younger swung his legs down off of the western-style bed. "A couple days from now, you were gonna meet a girl... And she was gonna save the world. Except, without that sympathetic voice to talk to..."
"Wait - save the world?! Sounds like something out of a comic book."
"That's about what I said, yeah. But it certainly seems to be real enough... and there are people who don't want it saved."
Yuuichi wasn't a fool, and he didn't need it spelled out any farther. "Some of whom had a couple million yen to spend assassinating some little cog that the entire machine needs even if you'd think it shouldn't?"
"That's the size of it. And the side of the equation we'd like to see win can't really spend more energy on this than their enemies have... At this point, it looks like the best thing they can do is stop one unnatural death... by trading it for another."
"You lost me."
"This room has two doors... one of us will have to walk through each." A nod towards the door that should have lead to the apartment's common room. "That one leads up - on the other side, you wake up with Miss Munakata crying into your shirt and doctors muttering about how lucky you are. The other..." he smiled, softly, and sighed. "...is a one-way trip. You walk through the first and meet the girl of your dreams - and I make my life worth something. But, since free will's just about the biggest part of what this entire question is about, you're the only one that can decide to do it."
Yuuichi heaved a sigh of his own and heaved himself to his feet. "And if we switch it?"
"I honestly don't know. Either I wake up in my dorm room and think this was all just some wierd-ass dream... or I find myself wearing a stupid looking bleach job and really, really wishing I actually spoke Japanese."
"Stupid looking!" he tried to sound outraged, but the attempt at humor fell so flat in the room's heavy atmosphere that he gave it up almost immediately. "...I made a promise. Never to save my own life... at the expense of someone else's."
"...Fuck."
"Are you a gambler?"
"Not ever. But... it's your life."
They looked at each other for a long moment, then Yuuichi held out his hand. "Tate Yuuichi."
The other shook it. "Nathan Baxter."
"Take care of Shiho for me," he said, and Nathan nodded. And then, with no further words or drama, he walked to the door that, if this really had been his bedroom, would have led to the bathroom.
Opened it.
Stepped through.
And shut it behind him.
Alone in the room, Nathan let out the breath he had been holding in a rush and turned to rest a hand on the remaining door's knob. "Please, dear lord," he said to himself, "Don't let me fuck up."
Ja, -n
(*just realized his sister is a year older than she is*)
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."