destinystrings | The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear

Who: Sam Erstwhile and Levi Jebediah Garrity
Where: Virgo District, in an alley somewhere
Summary: Sam is having lunch and Levi interrupts him by accident. Except there is also the whole thing about Sam actually being an eldritch horror, and down the line Lev's Persona gets awakened! Yay?
Warnings: SAM IS HIS OWN WARNING because he's a big gross blob of Lovecraftian horrorstuffs. So. Yeah. Also there is the eating of raw fish, if that bothers you any.

Sam's hungry.

Of course, he does like any normal person does when one's hungry, and makes a beeline to the food stalls situated around the Virgo District. The noise from the vendors shouting in his face makes him wince, and he spends a while trying to find a shop or stall that is relatively quiet. Ah. There. A nice little booth where fish are sold.

Perfect.

He can spot the small buckets of freshly-caught fish that the shopkeeper has behind the counter, and, after distracting him by "accidentally" knocking over one of the boxes containing a load of red snappers all over the street, Sam picks up a bucket and disappears in the crowd, leaving commotion and chaos behind him.

But now he needs a place to eat all of this. A place where hopefully nobody will bother him, because the last thing he needs is somebody disturbing him while he eats. The way he eats isn't...well, normal. There are no forks and knives, no tables, no napkins, no plates. He has to allow his true face to shine through, and that is not a face he wants other people to see.

And here we go, a nice dark little alley. He smiles slightly, wandering in, making sure nobody is following him, and sets the bucket down. Oh, it looks really good- it did take a while, after his transformation back home to get used to eating stuff like this (there was a disconnect between the human mind and the quite alien cravings he got which was really annoying), but now he can't imagine eating anything else.

He lets that human image unravel- first, he lets the octopus-like eyes pop out, then makes tendrils split off his skin to dig into the bucket and bring fish by fish into himself. There are no teeth to grind them up, really- his body just does the work for him, dissolving the bones and scales without any problem.

It's messy and gross, yes, but he's hungry. He needs to survive. And he's so into what he's doing, that he wouldn't even notice somebody walking in on what he's doing.

He should really be more vigilant, next time.

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Lev had to get used to living off what he could pretty quickly after he'd been knocked off the course of being tithed. CyFi had helped him a lot with that, teaching him about just how much people threw out after the day's work.

So alleys are his target right now - hopefully he won't have to dig through the actual trash, but he will if he has to.

... However, what he finds is quite different from just an empty alley. He's... not sure what he's looking at, but his head is starting to hurt. He can't look away, though.

Sam keeps eating, poring over what he had learned so far. Personas. Gods and angels who walked the streets like any regular person. Demons that ran around during a 13th hour. It was all a lot to take in, but Sam knew that once he found a way to control it all, he wouldn't have to worry about a thing.

...Except, of course, people who discovered what he really was. Like the boy staring at him from the end of the alley.

Sam freezes in place, and turns his head slowly towards him, yellow octopus eyes blinking languidly. That...wasn't good. The tentacle holding a fish drops it back in the bucket- he was still hungry, but darn it, somebody had spotted him. He couldn't return back to looking human, lest the boy tell others that he saw a monster change into a man...then he'd be killed almost immediately.

Maybe he could just drive him away, spook him into leaving...? With that thought, Sam starts to slowly walk over, black tendrils held menacingly up in the air.

Time to scare a little boy away.

Lev takes a step back, his head pounding. It feels like it's going to split open. He's unable to catch his breath, and it feels like a giant weight is pressing on his chest.

This isn't a demon, is it? Pastor Dan never really talked about demons much, so he really has no idea what they'd be like. But this pure fear running through him is close to what he imagines it would be like.

The monster is getting closer, and his legs give out, sending him sprawling to the pavement. He looks up at it, tears in his eyes. He doesn't want to die. Not when there's still so much to do.

He wants to scream but he doesn't have enough air. He feels like he's drowning, and oh God, someone please help -

- and suddenly there's a blue glow, and a large angel dressed in purple materializes before him.

'I am thou
Call upon me when thou hast need of mine aid
I am Zadkiel of the Hermit Arcana
His mercy is infinite...'

The angel lifts a hand, wind whipping up and directing itself towards Sam.

Good, good. Go away. Leave him be. Run away and never come back, little boy, Sam thinks, as he continues to approach him, tendrils twitching. It feels good to be in a position of power, for once, it really does.

And he's ready to grab the boy and toss him out when the sudden bright glow startles him and he leaps back, only to gaze upon...is that an angel? What's going on? Zadkiel, of the Hermit arcana...?

Is this a Persona?!

Oh, and that angel is planning to attack him now. Great. Sam lets out a sound that can only be described as a painful mixture between a shriek and and a hiss, retreating backwards and abandoning keeping the form of his legs to go for the option of slithering across the ground like the amoeba-like creature that he is- it's much faster, anyways.

Where can he run? He looks up with a million eyes, searching trying to find a way to get out, and- there. A window up on the building.

Don't mind him, he's just going to forget about lunch for now and try to beat a retreat by trying to climb up the wall- fighting is really not his forte at all.

Lev takes a few more steps backwards, trying to get away from the thing. He feels like he's going to throw up, but he doesn't want to let it catch him by surprise from behind. He watches as it slithers away, shaking a bit.

Zadkiel turns and casts Dia on him, before returning his gaze to Sam, hovering in front of its caster protectively.

He hisses and gurgles angrily- no, he hadn't expected this. Back home, little boys did not summon angels out of nowhere to attack him, and even if his own Persona was awake, it's not like he could use it, because that would out him as an actual person.

No, if he wanted to keep this whole "actually a monster" thing secret, then he would have to defend himself. The bucket of fish is still laying where he dropped it...quickly, he reaches down with a few tendrils, pulling it up, and then throws it as hard as he can at the angel- no use in waiting around to see what it could do.

Hopefully that would give him the distraction he needed to reach that window.

Lev darts to the side, his angel moving with him, and he bats away the bucket. It hurts, but at least it's not a direct hit - years of baseball practice have served him well.

He doesn't move towards the creature, but keeps his gaze on it, despite how much his head hurts from being near it.

Finally he reaches the window- success! - and opens it up by pushing below it. He only manages to hiss back at Levi before he's finally slipped in, not planning to stick around to see what other things that angel had up it's sleeve. Luckily the room he broke in seems empty, so he stays there to coalesce back into his human form before heading downstairs to get out as fast as he can.

Darn it. And here he was hoping for a nice peaceful lunch. Guess Hinoto-Ri couldn't even give him that.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear

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