heavenly restriction.

Alright, that one got her good.

Shoko snorts a small laugh before tucking her hands into that lab coat, stepping a little closer, "Well, certainly not of my own choice."

She says it in a way that has her glancing down to her phone in her pocket and realizing she had been lacking on checking it these days. Even so, she picks her head back up and scratches along her neck with a half shrug.

"I mean, as good as I can be I suppose. I've been here for a few months and outside of having a lot of my abilities basically behind paywalls-- It's been fine."

Refreshing.

He'd feel like an asshole if he ruined that for her.

"Oh yeah? Tryin' to make a rival out of me?"

Honestly, it wasn't too much of a bad idea... he's been doing nothing but laying on his ass for days at a time...

Hm.

"But only after you've healed up proper. I'm not fighting some old guy who thinks he can get away with hiding his wounds."

Unfortunately for him, she was just as observant as he was about the finer details.

He summons a bottle of soda to trail after him before finding his seat in the chair. There’s a moment of awkwardness when he faces her lounging in the couch, but it’s not so debilitating that he can’t just speak through it anyways.

“I don’t know what a sumo is,” Aurelius adds, then says, “but I’ve been bested by a demon.”

“More than once, each time with disturbing consequences. Killing him is a temporary solution at best, and so I find myself at a loss for what to do. I quite dislike this feeling.”

He folds his hands in his lap and leans forward, one shoe tapping restlessly against the ground. The bottle of Instacool soda floats behind his head like an extra prop.

”I’ve considered simply locking us together and killing him for eternity every time he respawns, but I suspect he’ll get some perverse sense of satisfaction from the arrangement. His only viable weakness is another friend of mine, though I wonder…”

Aurelius trails off, his voice growing cold.

Maki didn't need to make note of his fingers, or how he tapped, but they happen in passing. Annoyance. She could relate to that..especially at the prospect of locking oneself into a never ending death loop with the person you loathe the most in the world.

Now the aspect of how literal his words were, she didn't dwell on. Instead choosing to take them for literal value because-- why not? The worst aspects of people were called similar, so it might as well be true.

And so she speaks up only when his voice drops and he looks to be talking more to himself that her.

"But you called him a friend."

She points out.

Obvious.

"So what makes him one if you say that?"

"I thought, perhaps, you'd want to share with your roommates."

"I assume it's still three to a dwelling."

He doesn't know what to do with his hands now, and settles for flexing the fingers inside his gloves after deciding against slipping them into his pockets.

"...No, I suppose I shouldn't know you any better than this. Though you're very strange already." He pauses. "Not in a bad way, that is. And I don't mean the scars."

They were striking enough, but it's also unusual to find a random teenager happy to let him drop by without a single credential to his name. She doesn't look like the naive type, so perhaps she was comfortable dealing with strangers.

More magic and unexplainable abilities that she hadn't seen-yet.

Seeing the taller and, only assumed, older stand there and call her strange followed by an apology finally does get a laugh out of her. It's simple and nothing more than a single note, but it leaves her smiling some at the edges.

"Y'know, you remind me of someone. He had a similar vibe when I first met him."

The younger finally nods and gestures over to the chair in the living room before she steps around him to flop herself into the couch. Making herself comfortable in a way that just once again established that this was her home, but even having a stranger in it didn't deter her from acting how she wanted.

"You can talk all you want. When I said that strangers were sometimes the best people to talk to, I meant it literally. Whatever it is you wanna get off your chest or work through..just go for it."

There's a pause as she thinks momentarily before tacking on.

At 7:59AM, three knocks sound on Maki's door.

Opening it reveals a tall blond man dressed in a three-piece suit, carrying a paper bag of four Instacool Sodas in his arms. He looks rather out of place and vaguely ill-at-ease; there's an imbalance in his posture as he idly shifts his weight between his shoes.

"Good morning," Aurelius begins, a little stiffly. "Are you...still available?"

"I believe we arranged to meet this morning."

The paper bag crinkles in his hands as he tilts to reveal the contents.

"Huh."

More of a statement of note and not a question before she steps off to the side and gestures for him to come in. Where as he was dressed in his 'casual best', she was dressed in her most 'comfortable best'. Black jeans and a white sleeveless button up tucked to the front.

"Come on in. You didn't havta bring all of them. Just one'll do."

A simple bargain really and she looks up to him with another note of his, everything, and nods up to him.

It..had been some time since they spoke, and he didn't make the effort to reach out, he will admit.

"What, do you need permission? I already unlocked it-"

He turns the nob and opens the door for her, still a little disheveled from crawling out of bed, but it was about as presentable as he felt like being at the moment.

Maki, on the other hand, was already dressed for a day out it seemed like. The attire itself was a mix of athletic wear and a jacket. Still in the habit of waking early to do her usual training even despite being in this new and unfamiliar place.

"A lot of stuff has been happening lately, so I wanted to come drag you out to do something."

She pauses and then nods up to him.

His eyes adjust to the brightness of that phone screen as he registers the messages, sliding a thumb up the screen to unlock his device and type a response.

It's only after he manages to pull himself up and out of the tangle of sheets he had curled himself and Shiro into that he gets to figure out why.

Maki was already there when he goes to put a bleary eye through the peephole to cheek. The older teen on the other side of his condo door and waiting against the railing of the walkway.

He's lucky in that she doesn't have all her abilities back, or else she might have heard him before he even unlocked the door. The sound itself causing her head to perk up and her hands push herself up off the railing.

"Hey- lemme in, Megumi. I heard that click."

His eyes are watering, though he can't tell if he's crying or because the wind stings his eyes. Maki's greatly enjoying it though, and Yuuta can't help but find her excitement contagious.

"It's scary! But it's kind of fun!" A pause, words broken with a whoop of laughter. "I never said I outgrew it though! You did!"

There were definitely people staring when they went over the edge, but Yuuta can't even think about them anymore, shifting his hand to grab Maki's own from where she had been holding his wrist.

Another, louder, laugh bubbles up out of her throat as the wind whips past their faces and she can feel the light sting of it against her cheeks. It only cuts short when Yuuta grabs her hand proper and she feels herself suck in a breath that she hadn't been expecting.

Her head turns to look to him through the squint of her lashes, as if she could gauge *anything* of him while in the middle of this. But instead of trying to wiggle out of his grip like she had the passing thought of, immediate and complicated annoyance like an ever present inheritance from her father, she gives a squeeze of his hand back.

Her fingers lace into a clasp so they don't drift, like he said and she even swings her other arm around to reach for his other hand as well. Fingers brush, and miss, only to try again before she can get ahold of his other hand proper.

"Yknow-"

She says it up over the whistling of the wind as they continue their descent through the floating isles. Voice still a little soft even despite how it carries normally.

But even after their squabbles they ended up drawing closer, and Toge ended up becoming one of the few who could see a softer side of Maki. One that would sneak out with her to 24 hour corner stores for snacks when neither seemed able to get to sleep.

"Nah, I've been there a few times with Fushiguro already. Already know some stuff you're gonna love. We can stock up like we did on your protein drinks."

Toge huffs at the arm resting along his head, a cheeky little grin peeking from the corner. He missed his best friend.

Even now, his precedence of being a picky eater was well known to the older teen and she felt herself huffing a laugh at the mental image. Both of them in the store and Megumi staring in mild disinterest at most things and pulling a face at the more over-indulgent limited edition items.

Then Toge mentions she should go try and see Her Cousin and there is a thoughtful silence that passes over her.

"Yeah. He should be checked in on...Maybe I'll make him cook those chicken meatballs Yuji taught him. Give him something to do."

She looks down to him and his little cheeky grin...and picks up a hand to tug on the corner of his cheek. Like as if he was more mochi than a person.

Well. It might not be that bad.

"It sounds like you're interested in the, uh, speed part." He's looking down when another leaps from one of the nearby isles, this time with a brightly colored parachute to gently guide them down. "It does look....a little fun."

He's about to step back from the ledge again when he feels Maki grab his wrist in a vice. Her footsteps pick up into a run and --

The urge to scream bubbles up for a moment in her. Not out of fear but excitement. It manages to pass by quick enough as she instead listens out for the boy beside her whom's hand she was still holding. She hadn't gotten to really let lose and enjoy such a sensation since, well, Sakurajima. But even THAT had come with its own stipulations.

Her body splays out for a moment to better get some drag, getting quickly used to the freefalling sensation, and gives a reassuring (maybe) squeeze to the gangling teen still at her side.

"Maki-san, this seems wildly dangerous!"

The wind is wild up here in the Sky Strewn Isles. It had piqued Yuuta's interest when he first saw them in the distance, but now - now he's standing at the highest one among some other brave souls.

He's a bit of a thrill seeker, but this seemed excessive.

"I don't know about this!" He's digging his heels in just a little to make her slow down, his eyes darting over the edge once more. The bottom was too far for him to see properly, but -

"C'mon String Bean, of course it's dangerous. But that doesn't mean it's deadly. It's being advertised as a more ridiculous sky-diving. And plenty of people do that normally all the time."

As if to prove her point she picks her head up towards movement on another floating cliff-edge and sees someone else give a loud whoop prior to leaping off.

"The parachute part is just if you wanna glide down an enjoy the view. If you wanna go for speed then I guess you don't need it."

She had a point in the fact this was a new place with a new situation, of which he never dreamed he would be subjected to. To be fair, he never thought he'd lose either, and yet here he was.

His situation was closer to the fact his tunnel vision has opened into a valley view. It's as strange as it is overwhelming and beautiful in some instances. Awestruck to the point indecisiveness is unlike him.

He didn't feel the need to relay any of this with the woman, however, but he could give a sort of vagueness.

"To put things in perspective for you, I died in the Taishō era. You get some modicum of knowledge from the modern era apparently when you arrive here. However... this is just a lot to take in. In general."

They turn down a hallway, the sounds of fighting ricocheting off the metal walls.

Or maybe that a gunshot? A bullet bouncing off the metal walls of a space station sounded incredibly idiotic now that he has a second to think about it.

She gestures to him an then to the white walls and the noises just beyond the final bit of shadows they still stayed under.

"The realization of so many new things at once. Exhilarating, right? But your mouth shuts down because everything else of you is focusing on the *more* around you. Or something like that."

Maki turns her head more to the front once again to gauge what she felt like doing next.