destinystrings | I wanted to be a lumberjack...

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I wanted to be a lumberjack...

Who: Minako & Minato Arisato and YOU
Where: Starting in Pisces and moving around the city!
Summary: Minako drags Minato out of bed to explore! And hopefully they'll run into more people on the way...
Warnings: ~~uncalled for violence with pillows~~ none

ooc: first thread reserved for Minako's wake-up call, but otherwise the twins will be out and about. Please feel free to threadjack or start a new thread if you want them to run into your character or wish to run into them!

Earlier...

Oh, how wonderful it was to finally have been allowed to go to their apartments and get some sleep! If he were awake, Minato would have barely remembered staggering through the door and collapsing on his bed. Or futon. Whatever it was. It didn't really matter to him presently, as he was sound asleep, still in his (singed and smokey) school uniform. At least he'd remembered to remove his shoes, though he did seem to have forgotten to lock his door.

Later...

With the sleepyhead up, washed, in clean clothes and out the door, it was time for the two of them to explore! Apartments were all well and good, but there was so much more to the city than mere residential districts. So of course that meant it was time to find the subway station, hop on a tube and go exploring!

Besides, knowing where things were was the first step in finding a good place to get a job, get food to eat, engage in various activities to raise one's social stats, etc...

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Minako rubs the back of her head where her rude brother just ran into her without apologizing.

"Calling would've taken too long, too!" No, it probably wouldn't have, but she was far too caught up in the chase. Also she had expected to meet up with him before they got all the way back here.

But... right. Shinjiro and Minato are sizing each other up now, so she should probably introduce them even though they already know each other's names... "Senpai, this is my brother, Minato. I hope you can be friends." You both can use more of them, in her opinion. It doesn't matter that Minato probably had just as many social links as she did, back home.

"No, it wouldn't have. Use your head." Most people would have at least thought twice before following him down somewhere like this. He didn't even know the territory, what places were safe and and weren't. It made him uneasy.

He tilts his head, shoves a piece of broken glass away with his foot, and stares down at Minato again. He tries to imagine this kid leading them. Aki and Mitsuru had put their faith in and trusted this guy. And, presumably, he had too. Hard to believe. "Then, if you don't mind me asking, what are you fighting for?"

Well, this is a little less... scenic than outside a ramen shop, but Minato almost wants to laugh at the question. Word for word, this sure is Shinjiro. Instead, he settles for smiling a bit, though there's something sad about the smile, for this question really highlights for Minato how similar things must have gone for both him and his sister. Including Shinjiro's fate.

He manages to keep himself from looking at where the bullet wounds had been, instead forcing his thoughts on the present - this meeting, the new start they all get here. The question Shinjiro just asked him.

Scuffing his foot on the ground absently, Minato replies, "A future."

Minako falls quiet as the two young men size each other up. She recognizes the question as well. It was the same as the first time he'd spoken to her... Back then, she hadn't really had a good answer for him. She fought because she'd been asked to, because that was where her cards had lead her (both literally and figuratively.) But now...

Now, she thinks she'd probably say the same as Minato. She's fighting for the future.

The events that had transpired on the either side of the timeline weren't really so different from one another. Same coin, different face.

Shinjiro had wondered—and still does—about just how similar of a life his counterpart had led. The question he had just asked Minato had given Shinjiro a moment to gauge things. It had given him enough time to watch emotion creep into Minato's expression and into his eyes, something Shinjiro hadn't expected to see. He had been hoping for next to nothing at all. (Shit, kid, I probably barely talked to you. Stop looking at me like that.) The question had been half-asked to satisfy a certain buried curiosity, though it was as sincerely given as it had been a month ago. Any answer would have sufficed, as it had then, even with a surprised but honest "I don't know."

You just had to hope that you could figure out just where you were going by the end and why, so that maybe you could feel like you had finally done something right by the time your journey was over with.

He nods. "I see. Not quite the same answer as the one your sister gave me." His tone and expression are as unchanging and neutral as they always are, betraying very little in the way of emotion. Maybe he's being serious, maybe he's being as lighthearted as he can bring himself to be (though his capacity for it is small, a weak and malnourished thing), or maybe his reply is little more than an afterthought, be it a fond one or otherwise.

Though, then again, perhaps it could be all three.

"But you'll do your thing, and I'll do mine, I guess. I think that's how it's supposed to go."

"That wasn't the answer I gave the first time you asked me, either. But... yeah. It probably is." Minato pauses, glancing sidelong at his sister. "It'd be nice to stick together a bit, though."

A strange new place with a few familiar people... Shinjiro doesn't know the back alleys yet, and neither do they. It's a chance to learn together, right? Or something like that.

"He's right.... What were you doing back here all by yourself, anyway?" It's interrogation time, Shinji. You didn't think you'd avoid that, right?

He had been hoping to.

Nothing more annoying than getting nagged.

He shrugs his shoulders. "Looking around."

Seeing what he can find. His feet might not know their way around the sectors yet, but they will. He's made it his business to know—and this sector in particular caught his interest. Odd jobs he's used to doing can probably be found around here—he doesn't want to deal with anything that requires commitment. And truth be told, it's hard not to gravitate to spots like this. After living on the streets for two years, the dust and dirt and shit starts to feel like home.

You'd also be surprised at what you can learn on the streets. And it's often more honest than the crap you get force fed by a city's internal and external politics.

They're the ones that shouldn't be here.

"That's a coincidence, so are we! We should keep looking around together, then."

Whether this is serious, or an attempt to try and get Shinjiro to follow them back to less dangerous territory...

Well, it's a bit of both, to be honest.

". . . find anything interesting so far?"

Besides a lot of broken glass and needles, and a teenage girl who stalks you and drags her poor innocent brother along with her.

Of course, that said he does think it's important to know the layout of a place. He just wishes they'd gotten a better look, because he's a bit lost now...

Anything interesting? "Pretty sure you two take the damn cake."

It was like watching caution and common sense die in an explosion of spirited red and reluctant blue for a few seconds there.

He sighs.

And it looks like the nosy teenage girl with stalker-like tendencies is about to get her wish, because Hell will take him first before Shinjiro will allow the two of them to wander freely around this part of the neighborhood if he's around to help it. Shinjiro's also not so gullible that he'd believe that the two of them wouldn't follow him further in if he escorted them out and then excused himself from having to socialize. Not that he doesn't know that, in a way, the both of them can take care of themselves. He hasn't seen Minato fight, but he's seen his sister take down Shadows three times her size.

Happily, he might add.

But all it takes is a single misstep for something to happen. Shinjiro's certainly seen enough of Sagittarius today that he knows this place is full of the rougher crowds he was used to seeing back home.

He takes one look back at the fire-eaten building before striding forward, brushing past the twins.

"Let's go then."

"All right!"

If there's one thing that draws Minako in, it's the thrill of a challenge. Whether it's climbing Tartarus and taking down Shadows, playing an important volleyball match, charging into a nightclub that she's really too young to enter or forcing her way into her gruff senpai's bedroom, any instance of "no" or barrier erected is only more likely to catch her attention. Which is to say... yes, she'd have followed him if he'd tried to ditch her.

She really wants to take his arm again, but even she has a sense of place and she thinks that maybe this alley isn't the best one. So she falls into step beside him, glancing at Minato to make sure he's doing the same on her other side.

And after a brief pause in which Minato studies the building they are leaving behind, he follows, hurrying a few steps to catch up before simply falling in line. Although Minako is between him and Shinjiro, Minato can't help but sneak glances in over at him. What is different about him? What is the same? Did he still wind up with a bus stop sign at one point, or did he stick strictly to axes? Did he still walk with Koromaru a lot?

Of course, Minato isn't actually going to ask any of these things, but he still finds himself wondering. Finding things to keep an eye out for as time goes on. But he also makes note of his sister's reactions, filing them away like pieces of a puzzle to be assembled later. People he knows and yet doesn't know...

Damn, her brother's quiet.

It's an odd juxtaposition, given the type of leader he's used to following and fighting beside.

Maybe if he hadn't known Minato was her twin, he wouldn't find Minato being as quiet he is so damned odd. ...Not that Shinjiro had any idea of what to expect from the kid, granted, except from what little he had heard from Minako combined with the respect Aki obviously had for him (which he's sure extends to Mitsuru as well). Even Minako's concise description of her twin didn't necessarily cover everything. When she had mentioned that he was quiet, Shinjiro wasn't sure as to what standard of quiet he should hold him to, Minako's joking and "sly" attempt at comparison aside.

"This way," he says, intending to lead the both of them out of the trash-infested alleyways and back into more decent territory.

But in the meantime, as he guides them out the way they came, it's impossible for him not to notice the sidelong glances Minato is sending his way every now and again. In fact, it's starting to get ridiculous.

"Look, if you have something on your mind, ask."

To his credit (or perhaps against it), Minato fails to look particularly sheepish on being called out. Instead he shrugs and shifts his gaze to the road ahead.

"Sorry. ... it's nothing."

He doesn't feel it's productive to tell the truth here. He doesn't want to say, 'I was just thinking about the last time I saw you and wondering if this is what Akihiko-senpai and Mitsuru-senpai felt like seeing either of us up and walking. And I was wondering how different and how the same things were between my sister's world and mine. If you were more or less at peace there. And if you were going to be okay here.' Because he doesn't want to darken the mood or pry. And besides it isn't like these thoughts particularly matter outside of his own introspection and adjusting to the differences of this place.

She can tell, just by his demeanor, that this had to do with the accident, or just being unknown to someone he'd called a friend. She'd already felt that herself, meeting Akihiko and Mitsuru again. But her brother doesn't have the advantage of being entirely too talkative and energetic. She already can tell he doesn't have her habit of going on about trivial things, all to keep the mood up.

But that just means she can help him out instead. She pokes him in the arm, and then actually grabs it to guide him a pace closer to herself and Shinjiro in formation. "It's okay to give him a hint!" Even if it's not the real subject, there's plenty of happier things he could talk about. "Tell Senpai something interesting about yourself."

Edited 2012-09-18 21:01 (UTC)

He's starting to see how the kid can go around and stand in vacant corners, trying to stay out of everyone's way. He also has the hands-in-pockets thing down. Shinjiro can see that much.

Of course, despite what Minato says, Shinjiro doubts it's simply nothing, and his train of thought comes to the same conclusions Minako's does. He remembers the way the kid had looked at him before, and those eyes hadn't been the eyes of someone who didn't given a damn. Not that he can do much about being suddenly alive again, just as he can't just erase the memories that the kid has of him either, not anymore than he himself can remember what his alternate self had experienced.

The questions he wonders but doesn't ask are a bit more complex, some of which might not even have a definite answer were he even to bring them to voice, like the differences between worlds. They were the same, but minutely different. Perhaps one of these days they'll both find themselves sharing a wall, and during that blip in time they'll have an entirely silent conversation in which everything is said in-between the nothing at all. And at the end of this conversation, Shinjiro will just shrug his shoulders and turn to look across the room at something else, because peace, as a whole, is something difficult to attain and hold on to, and probably something Shinjiro will never completely find so long as he is still mortal.

But. But if he had the mind to be sincere and broadcast the truth in a few meaningful glances, perhaps he'd tell Minato he had been probably as happy in his world as he ever could be—probably happier, in a way, than his other self had been, even if that small happiness came at the expense of emotional equilibrium. It was something Minato could probably have understood, because it had involved something his own timeline had been distinctly robbed of.

And as for being okay here, well, all he has to do is use his head and use his eyes, because, with any luck, he'll stumble upon the answer eventually.

"Guessing you like music."

Unless, of course, those earphones are just his idea of fashion.

Edited 2012-09-19 01:29 (UTC)

Minato doesn't want Shinjiro to do anything about being alive except maybe enjoy it. Do something he never got a chance to before, perhaps. But really, once Minato gets over the strangeness, he'll be nothing but happy that at least one Shinjiro gets some extra time and that his sister gets to spend some extra time with someone she obviously cares for. Whether it's just the care of a friend and comrade or something more, Minato has yet to discern, but he's working on that in his observations.

In the meanwhile, though, he wouldn't have expected real answers if he'd voiced his questions anyway, least of all to that last question of being okay. No one can predict the future, and Minato knows as well as anyone how transitory things can be. One can be okay for now but then something can happen to change that permanently and vice versa. He just hopes that maybe a (sort of) fresh start might help Shinjiro somehow...

But either way, he has every intention of watching for himself - and not just keeping an eye on Shinjiro but of course on his sister, as well - and all of those he considers friends. ~~Which, given his track record, will eventually include at least one person for every arcana!~~

He'll come to his own conclusions and support his friends in his own way, but he still... wonders.

But soon enough the moment has passed and his sister is grabbing his arm and dragging him closer (he doesn't even bother with token resistance), and he is at a loss for what to say. Talk about himself? What is there to say...? Not that he thinks nothing he does is of interest to Shinjiro, but there's no starting point with such a broad question!

However, luckily Shinjiro comes to his rescue, and Minato nods, smiling a little and actually bringing a hand out of his pocket to fiddle with the mp3 player dangling around his neck for just a moment.

"All kinds. Playing it and singing, too."

Look! A couple details right there. That's enough for conversation... right?

Minako looks over at him with interest, since that's not a topic they'd discussed yet. Although they'd both enjoyed music when they were little, which seemed to have culminated in them even buying the same brand of headphones and wearing them the same way (although she's pretty sure that mutual habit came from observing a certain relative they had both stayed with at some point), six was too young to develop much in the way of taste or talents. "You play music? What instrument?"

"Ah... the violin," he answers with a shrug. "I didn't join the music club at Gekkoukan, though." He adds that detail to forestall any questions about it, figuring that the lack of time for practice or concerts should be apparent.

Good on him. Clubs were a waste of time. Or so Shinjiro told himself. Not that he had ever bothered to participate in any. Hell if he knew how any of them managed to budget their time between school, clubs, and Tartarus to begin with.

He finally leads them out of the back alleys, stopping and reorienting himself for a few seconds before choosing to walk in a northernly direction. Less trouble that way, and nearer to decent society.

"You bother to even join anything?"

His words, of course, though knife-sharp, are only as harsh as one interprets them to be.

Edited 2012-09-22 23:46 (UTC)

"I'm sure Mitsuru-senpai got him to join Student Council." If she'd had enough confidence in him to make him the leader, she's sure he would've been asked that particular favor as well. And Mitsuru has a way of making you do your best to please her.

Minato nods in answer to Minako's remark. "Mitsuru-senpai doesn't take no for an answer..." There's a pause, then, as he thinks about what counts. "Mm, I ran track and was part of the art and fashion clubs."

~~He is the most overtly stereotypically masculine guy you will ever meet, Shinjiro.~~ Having an overloaded and meticulously balanced schedule, it seems, is another thing he shares in common with his sister. Though perhaps maybe he didn't manage quite so well, if his habit of falling asleep in class from time to time is any indication...

Still, he doesn't seem particularly defensive in response to Shinjiro's pointed question. He's well aware that the way he carries himself and the way he acts doesn't exactly give the impression of a high energy, very social student. But there's a place even for the quiet slouchy ones in clubs and social activities.

So Minato was basically part of the "misunderstood creative soul brigade" plus a little bit of running and model guinea pig work.

Well, whatever floats his boat.

Not like Minato looks like he has a lot of testosterone in his system anyway. Probably had gotten bullied into submission by excess melatonin a long time ago. Hell, Minato probably doesn't eat right either, not if he's at all familiar with the dorm's horrendous dining habits. That might help explain Minato's perpetually drowsy look.

"You go running with Aki then?"

He knew Minako had, occasionally.

Edited 2012-09-23 07:04 (UTC)

He is totally a misunderstood creative soul. Can't you see how tortured he is? No? ... well, neither can he. He just ~~rolled a die~~ went for the club that gave him the option to muck about with paints from time to time. And draw zombies when he was supposed to be drawing statues. But this isn't about art - this is about exercise, and in any event, Minato gives something between a nod and a shrug.

"Mm. Sometimes."

Not every morning and definitely not on the mornings of exams or when he has a cold, but definitely a few times a week. In fact, they'll even be taking it up again in the future...

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greatseal - 2012-09-23 16:59 (UTC) - Expand

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I wanted to be a lumberjack...

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/breaks turn order for this reply!

break away~

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