ALFG Chapter 155: Kisaragi Mixtapes Side A - Track 2

#02: HOME IS JUST A STATE OF MIND by ROD LADGROVE

Seven lives in Hatsune city. The only god residing in the living world, despite the fact that his older brother Three should be with him. When Damara points this out, he shrugs, running a hand through his hair.

"Three's a shut-in," he says. "Doesn't necessarily dislike people, just not very enthusiastic about meeting them."

"You said he's hosting Strider."

"I think he's just glad to have an excuse to stay in Kisaragi," Three says.

"Is that why nobody's booted Strider off the island?"

Seven picks at a loose thread on the hem of his jacket's sleeve. "Well, that," he says. "And the fact that we have no idea how to send you two back properly."

He explains the circumstances of her - their, she supposes - arrival. The tear in space and what it means to simply chuck them out the other side and hope they find their way back to the universe, and the consequences thereof. Dirk's Dead Man's Deal. The conditions for it to be completed. The dead end he's found himself in.

Damara doesn't know Strider all that well, what with each of them having walls upon walls built around themselves, but even she knows the impossibility of his situation. Peace. As if that's something that grows on trees, or just drops from the sky.

"M and One are trying to find a way around it," Seven says.

"What about you?" Damara asks. Seven tilts his head. "You're a Space player."

"Yeah, but I'm a destroyer," he says. "I'm not much use unless it's for wrecking things."

His fingers clench and unclench as he says that, his gaze darting away. Skittish. Ashamed. Scared, maybe. Why he's acting like she's gonna step on his toes, Damara has no idea. But it's something to file away, his aversion to his title.

They talk until the evening, Seven answering anything and everything Damara can ask questions to. One comes back with a slammed front door and a sudden chill that overtakes the entire ground floor, and Damara sits up straight in alarm.

"One?" Seven calls out.

The chill lifts immediately. Damara's breath stops misting.

"Sev, you're still here?" One responds, calling back from the front hall.

They poke their head around the doorway, blinking in surprise to find Damara and Seven still sitting by the kitchen island.

"Oh, I am so sorry," they say, switching languages easily. "I thought Seven had left and Megido-san was upstairs."

"We lost track of time talking," Seven says.

One nods, understanding. "I was thinking of getting food delivered. Is that okay?"

Damara raises an eyebrow. "You have food deliveries in the afterlife?"

Turns out they do, what with appearifier technology being commonplace, even on Kisaragi. They get food delivered to a terminal in the living room and split it among themselves. One turns the TV on with a wave of their hand and flips through channels until they find some godawful soap opera as background noise to their dinner.

Damara sits awkwardly on the couch, huddled in the corner with her feet up to hold herself small and close. Seven sits on the opposite end, but it's more out of habit than trying not to feel out of place in a stranger's house. One sits between them, the most at ease.

"What did you two talk about?" they ask.

"Mostly about Kisaragi, us," Seven says.

One's gaze slides to Damara.

"What he said," she says, finding the English turn of phrase useful.

"You know about Strider and how we're stumped how to get him back to his world, then," One says.

"Yes."

One nods. Takes a bite out of their food and swallows it before they continue.

"As far as we can tell, you're here because of your connection to him," they say. "Which is unfortunate since there are several other people who fit that criteria."

Which means it's a possibility it's gonna be raining people from another universe. A lot like what happened with the last universe, pulling in people from completely different sessions. This place would be a lot more convenient to fall into since their highest authorities are already gods aware of the game, but Damara's not looking forward to the possibility of meeting her friends again.

She supposes she can stay on the island. One seems hospitable enough. Dangerous, but welcoming. So far, anyway.

"Things are stabilizing out there, anyway, so we might have something soon," they say.

Damara watches them. Seven lifts his gaze from his food to them.

"Is that so?" he asks.

"The Prince and the Sylph are with the Anathema Point," they say. "According to them, they restored everything before they died. Everything should be healing soon."

"Won't that mean the walls will close?"

"The worst of them, yes, but as long as Lord English exists for their universe, there's always gonna be some hairline fractures that will appear." One waves their fork around. "But a stable universe means more chances of being able to find the right place to send Strider and Megido back to."

"And you can do that?" Damara asks.

"We'll figure some things out," they say. "It's either we find a way to your world or folks from your world find a way back to ours. The latter is easier. The former not so much."

"Why?"

One takes a sip of their soda first. Then, "Because we're so far removed from your world that connections would be very faint," they say. "The only reason you're here is because of Strider, and the only reason Strider's here is because a version of himself has been here before, and the person who cursed him all the way here shares my genetics."

A version of Strider? That's a new one. Seven hadn't mentioned that, but then again, it had never even occurred to Damara. So she'd never asked.

"Where's he from?" she asks. "The other Strider?"

One pauses. Seven glances at them, then his gaze flits about the place. Nervousness. Unlike One's perpetual ease, Seven wears his heart on his sleeve, which is ironic given the flat affectations of his expressions. But everything else gives him away. The averting gaze. The tapping foot. The wringing hands.

"Someplace," One says. "It's hard to trace back universes."

"Can you find connections from him to our universe, or anything close?"

"Ahhh, like a spiderweb?" they ask, making a motion with their finger, like they're connecting dots. "I suppose that's not a bad idea. It'd be fun dragging him back down here to use him as a guinea pig."

Seven kicks their leg. "One."

One chuckles. "It's fine, we won't be too mean about it."

Seven kicks them again, and stresses, "One."

"He'll live, little brother," they say, waving a hand. "I'll talk to M about it."

"You just got back."

"Fine, I'll sleep and talk to M in the morning," they say.

The conversation drops there. Seven only gives his older sibling one last worried glance before he returns to his food. All three of them turn their attention to the television, watching an episode of some show they have no idea about.

Seven offers to wash the dishes. One tells Damara she's welcome to use the guest room for the rest of her stay here, so she can go upstairs if she wants.

She hangs by the staircase and waits while One and Seven clean up the kitchen, staying silent and straining her ears to catch whatever bits of conversation she can manage. Unfortunately, in a house this big, it's not much. Especially not when both One and Seven are so soft-spoken.

She ends up retreating to her room. Whatever. Their history isn't her business. She just needs to know if she's gonna go back to the hellscape that was New York or stay here.

Either way, she doesn't care. Either way, it isn't shit, but it's not ideal either.

Damara has long since stopped belonging anywhere.

-

One is gone again by the time Damara wakes up. Seven isn't, nice enough to stay behind and join her for breakfast and keep her company, despite the fact that he'd clearly been planning to go home yesterday.

"It's fine," he tells her. "Time doesn't work right in Kisaragi."

At her raised eyebrow, he explains the disconnect of linear time for the living world and the afterlife.

"It's probably only been seconds since I brought you here," he says.

That's helpful, she supposes, and then lowers her utensils. "You said the Anathema Point sent Strider here, specifically."

He nods.

She clicks her tongue and has to fight to keep herself from laughing. Of course that haughty little child would sent their fellow stubborn asshole to therapy. Anybody who spent at least five minutes with Strider could clock the severe need for a therapist almost on the spot.

Seven raises an eyebrow right back. "You think it's funny."

She shrugs.

"From what I know of him, it does seem a little humorous," he says, "And sad."

"How do you say it - he'll live." She waves a hand. "He needs it."

Seven hums. "I don't know this version all that well, but yeah, you're right. I think he does."

"What do you know of the other one, then?"

Seven pauses. "He was angry," he says, after a minute. "At himself, at everything. Full of rage and pride and hate."

He holds her gaze, for a moment. Damara bristles at the eye contact, and has to stomp down the urge to bare her teeth. From what little time she's spent with the god, she knows he's just naturally awkward and creepy and stares a lot. The look means nothing.

"He was cruel." Seven returns to his food. "He was awful."

Despite his words, Seven sounds sad. Must be the bleeding heart syndrome. The kid's gonna get himself hurt for that one day, but that's not Damara's business.

"Why do you all still talk to him, then?"

He pauses again, poking at a cut of meat on his plate.

"He tore my brother's soul to shreds," Seven says. "And my brother still forgave him."

Damara makes a face. "That's stupid."

"It is." Seven nods. "One never let it go. And I love my brother, but I'm not sure I can forgive it either." He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "But Three does, and it's his life."

"But why?" she asks.

"Because - " Seven takes a deep breath and looks up at her. " - have you ever been so fucked up that you felt nobody could understand you, but then someone does?"

She pauses.

"All the ugly parts of you. All of it. They see the worst of you, and you're horrified not because of the vulnerability but because you see yourself in them too," he says. "Like looking at a mirror."

He chuckles. Runs a hand over his face.

"A fucked up little funhouse mirror."

Damara pushes her plate away, brow furrowing as she searches for the expression, the turn of phrase she's heard from the humans before. "So, what, it's some sort of messed up 'we're not so different, you and I?'"

"Kind of?" Seven scratches his cheek. "I think Three's desperate for a do-over of his life and he latched onto the first sorry son of a bitch he could find."

"Is that why he's helping this version of Strider too, then?"

"Maybe." Seven says. "I think in some way, he wants to forgive himself but he doesn't know how."

God. Just her luck to be stuck on an island filled with melodramatic, self-loathing idiots. Maybe she should have burned up upon atmospheric entry.

"If you could do everything all over again, if you had some semblance of a chance to - wouldn't you take it?" Seven asks.

Damara stiffens. She thinks she flinches. She's not sure. She just knows she's gritting her teeth and her shoulders are tense.

If she could do everything all over again, she would have never befriended the people she did. She would have packed her bags and moved far far away from them. She would have never sought out Rufioh or Horuss or Meenah. She would have saved herself the heartbreak and the isolation, and never met any of them in the first place.

She wouldn't be the Damara Megido she was now - alone and lonely, with no friends but countless enemies. She wouldn't be on an afterlife talking to a naive little god, she would be dead and at peace, never to be disturbed again.

She would wipe everything that made her herself from existence. A reset. A do-over. At first chance, she absolutely would.

"Sorry," Seven says, switching back and ducking his head.

"It's fine."

"You looked upset."

Damara forces herself to smooth out the frown on her face.

"It's okay, you know," he says. "To want a do-over of everything. Regrets are pretty normal."

"Strider's the one who's here for therapy, not me."

Seven nods. "I know. You just…looked upset, Megido-san."

She does bare her teeth this time, the air around her sparking dangerously. Some pompous fuchsiablood-ken god had no right to pity her, from his ivory tower and his privileged bloodline.

She should get out of here. If she's gonna be stuck in another universe, she's not gonna spend all her time here talking to some melancholic piece of shit.

-

Seven's happy to show her around the island. They make their way to the city square and he shows her the map of Kisaragi, pointing out important landmarks and ports. This side of the island (Hivetown or something) has transportation to the living world, but Damara can't make heads or tails of the stops said transportation offers. Seven pulls up another map on his phone to show her the various planets.

Okay, so she might be a little out of her depth here. It's a new universe with absolutely zero resemblance to hers. Sue her.

The living world does offer more mileage. Kisaragi is bordered by an ocean that's not really an ocean and is famous for being suspended in time. Stagnant. Changing only by small, personal increments, or if something incredibly drastic happens to the universe as a whole. The living world, meanwhile, has various lands and the accompanying accommodations to move around them, like appearifiers. And public transport.

"Where is...Hatsune-shi?" Damara asks.

"Deimon, Land of Brimstone and Frogs."

Brimstone. Huh. "And the place is safe?"

Seven's brows dip as he tries to find words, and then waves a hand when his lingual capabilities fail him. He settles for saying, "One froze it over."

Earth was once an unstable, fiery landmass, she supposed, and humans ended up fine. "May we visit?"

"If you're up for it, sure." He shrugs again. "Just gotta tell One where you're going."

Damara bristles at the idea of surveillance, but then again, their First Guardian is already aware of her presence here. At least she's not a kept dog like Strider apparently is.

Seven calls One who gives them the go-ahead, and then they're on a hot air balloon for a tunnel in the sky that leads to the living world on the other side. The other passengers give Damara a wide berth - there are plenty of trolls in Kisaragi, though only the living ones are allowed to travel off the island - but Seven puts on dark glasses and pulls his hood up, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms, pretending to sleep. He looks like he's about to start robbing everyone. Damara tells him as much.

It gets a snort out of him.

"People…tend to recognize us," he says. "My eyes are a dead giveaway."

Right. The creepy, unblinking, gold eyes. Since they're an active pantheon, she imagines people would know his face. He looks ordinary enough in his plain clothes, but the eyes are an obvious tell.

They land in Shion station, on the east side of Hatsune city. As soon as their balloon exits the tunnel, it's like something clicks in the back of Damara's brain, and all the noise and urgency of the world returns to her. Some timey-sense that suddenly turns on.

It's unsettling. The feeling of being perfectly stable and then suddenly, there's a crawling sensation of your body rotting. It's slow, unnoticeable, but without the suspension of Kisaragi, it's such an obvious feeling. Like suddenly being aware of your breathing and now you have to manually breathe because you've forgotten how to do it automatically, now that someone's pointed it out.

Everyone else doesn't seem to notice, as their balloon lands and everyone's ushered out. Damara staggers off the ride and sways on her feet. Seven catches one of her shoulders and guides her to a nearby bench.

"It can be dizzying if you're not used to it," he says.

Dizzying is an understatement. Damara's organs are rotting right underneath her skin and there's nothing she can do to stop it, because it's natural. Cells are dying all over her, flaking off and blowing away in miniscule, infinitesimal specks.

A few ways off, someone approaches them. Seven stands and intercepts them, and Damara listens in fascinated attention as they speak some weirdly accented goldblood tongue, with a few burgundyblood derivatives here and there. This universe is so weird - she'd seen some human/troll halfbreeds in Kisaragi too.

The stranger offers Seven a bottle of something, motioning to Damara. He accepts and inclines his head, responding in thanks before he kneels in front her and hands her the bottle. The stranger leaves.

"Helps with the feeling of dying," he says.

"Hah?"

"It's…um…" Seven snaps his fingers, trying to get his words right again, before switching once more. "Sometimes you get low blood pressure from exiting Kisaragi," he says. "It helps."

The bottle he's handing her has some cheerful little cartoon with a speech bubble that says ELECTROLYTES! and HYDRATION! and she has no idea how that's supposed to help with the hyperawareness of her body decaying, but she supposes it's better than nothing. Then again, her condition might have to do with her being a Witch of Time exiting a place where Time was suspended, and now she's somewhere where it's working again.

She takes the bottle. Halfway through drinking, she's proven right because she's not dizzy or woozy. She tells Seven as much, about her classpect and the fact that she's very alert about the time switch.

His gold eyes widen behind his glasses, understanding slotting into place. He stands. "I'll be right back."

She watches him head for the vending machines standing by the wall, dropping in a few coins to get a couple of things. When he comes back, he's got some juice and soda, a pack of bread, a bag of chips, and a piece of lemon candy he got from one of the gumball machines at the very end of the vending machine row.

He tucks everything else under his arm and holds the candy out towards her.

"First things first, eat this."

-

The lemon drop is the vilest thing Damara has ever eaten. She lasts two seconds before she spits it back out, swearing and cursing, resisting the urge to telekinetically punt Seven back to Kisaragi.

Seven seems to expect her reaction, immediately handing her the soda and the juice - for her to pick between, she realizes - and she grabs the soda to wash the taste out. The only reason she doesn't throw Seven across the street is because he clearly has an explanation, if he'd known how she was going to react. Besides, there must be a reason those candies were in the gumball machine right by the landing pads.

"It's a good distraction," he says.

To her fury, it works, because she absolutely is focusing on how pissed she is about that damn candy instead of her time-dizziness earlier.

Damara snatches the bag of chips from Seven's hand, psychicly tossing the now-empty soda can into the garbage bin. Seven opens the juice for himself.

"Where to?" Damara asks, chowing down on the chips quickly, just so she can forget about the crime upon her tastebuds that she had to experience earlier.

Seven looks at his watch, which has now started to work. "We head to Sakine station and get a train," he says. "But it's almost dinner so we should probably get something to eat first."

And because Damara's not a fool, even though she's already eating, she agrees. There are plenty of restaurants around the balloon station, so it's not a long walk to find a place to eat. Seven lets Damara pick since she's the tourist, and they eat in a secluded corner, for Seven's sake. Damara's not too eager to deal with however people are gonna react to a known god being in the vicinity, so she goes along with it.

"What do you wanna do in Hatsune?" Seven asks.

"Sightsee," Damara says with a shrug. She hasn't really planned what she's gonna do, as again, she already knows she's not too invested on whether she gets stranded in this universe or not. She loses nothing and gains nothing either way.

Seven nods. "Hopefully One and M will find a way to get you back to your universe soon," he says.

She hums. Her nonchalant reaction makes Seven pause, but he doesn't press.

The sun has long since gone down by the time they leave. Seven keeps his glasses on even in the dim light, though with him being a Space player, it must not be too hard to navigate the physical world. Sakine station is a twenty-minute walk - it's not too bad, and Damara could burn some energy after a hefty meal.

Seven points landmarks and places to her, which she commits to memory just in case she ever needs to find her way around the city. If she ends up stranded here, she supposes it'll serve her well. If not, nothing lost there.

They board the 7:30 train in Sakine. Damara watches the city pass by through the windows, surprised to see that auroras are visible here too, not just on Kisaragi.

"There's a lot of solar activity that allows for it," he says, quietly as to not let the other passengers here, then tilts his head as if to motion to himself. "Prince of Space, remember?"

Damara hums.

"I didn't know you were a Witch of Time."

She makes an absentminded noise, far too entranced by the light show outside the window. It's been a long time since her title has mattered. The only use she's ever had for her abilities is defense; her title is a memory of a bad life. If she could, she'd gladly leave it behind, shed it like old skin, toss it away like an ill-fitting name.

"I suppose you're an enemy, Space player," she says.

Seven makes a weird huffing noise that she realizes is a soft laugh. "No, I swing closer to the Time end of our spectrum since I'm a Prince," he says. At her skeptical look, he draws a straight, flat line in the air with a finger. "Time-Space balance? Destroyer of -"

"Ah." Damara nods as she gets it. Right, right. A Destroyer of Space would somewhat tilt closer to Time, she supposes. However that works. Like some errant, mismatched piece in a line-up.

Maybe that's why Strider was so cerebral instead of instinctual. Tilted closer to Mind than Heart.

Speaking of.

"What's Strider doing now?" she asks.

"I dunno," Seven says. "Last I heard from my brother, M nearly beat his ass for something. I was here during our last phone call so I don't know how much time has passed for Three, if at all."

"He hasn't come here yet?"

"Never tried to after he figured it wasn't gonna get him anywhere. He just wants to go home and see his friends again."

Good for him. Damara clenches a fist and turns back to the window.

Unfortunately for her, Seven misreads the reaction. He says, gently. "I'm sure we'll get you back to your friends soon, Megido-san."

Her eye twitches.

She doesn't say anything. She feels Seven's curious, heavy gaze at her the whole ride to the city center.