[center][h1][b]Ren Mizushima[/b][/h1]

Interacting with: Rider ([@1Charak2]), Sosthenes ([@Grey]), Lancer ([@Eklispe])[/center]

[center][h2]Fuyuki City, Miyama Town - 2:06 PM December 2nd, 2012[/h2][/center]

[hider]He nodded, signaling he understood.

[i]I'd be happy if you called me Ren... Medusa,[/i] he thought, trying the name out. It had a feeling of trust behind it when he used it, but something about it still felt like it must carry painful memories. To be remembered the way she was, to die like that and be reviled by humanity to the point that she would even call herself a monster.

He turned his back to her while she put on the glasses. It would hardly do to make accidental eye contact with her right now. Too risky, at least until they knew the glasses worked.

He knew the Medusa myth, after all. The real story too, not the dime store fiction sold to the masses in pop culture. He'd crawled ass-first through enough ancient Greek ruins to know that Medusa hadn't started life as a monster. She had been a beautiful mortal, or in some stories a lesser earth goddess, who had been wrongfully punished by the gods for crimes she did noy commit and was cursed with a mane of snakes and looks that could kill. Most people thought Medusa was just another monster, but he knew the truth. Medusa's tale was a sad story, not a happy one about heroes and villains.

Rider finally putting on a pair of his glasses was the thing that snapped him out of his contemplation. He looked up, and for the first time in thousands of years, a mortal locked eyes with the dreaded Gorgon.

"W-Wow..." he couldn't help but say. Her eyes were as beautiful as she was. Powerful, elegant, and demanding. They had none of the predatory feeling he'd been expecting. To him they seemed like unblinking white orbs carved from marble, a crystal-like iris framing perfectly square pupils to signify her non-human ancestry. There was no better name for such oblique yet exquisite artistry than "jewels".

Painfully aware he was staring, Ren blinked. Quick! He needed to change the subject!

"Because I'm like you," he blurted abruptly. "That's why I have them, I mean..."

Ren smiled sheepishly.

"Well, that's not exactly true, I guess. My Pure Eyes are nowhere near as coo-... [i]dangerous[/i] as your Eyes of Petrification," he said, trying to catch himself before he said something that might offend Rider. "All mine do is let me see into the past, and I can't shut them off. Kinda dumb, huh? I need these glasses so I can, y'know, function normally. It's total sensory overload if I take them off. And yeah, I get that a lot. I think it's these glasses. They make me look younger."

When she asked him about new clothes, seeming uncharacteristically embarrassed, he suddenly became aware of just how lewd Rider's outfit really was, and in no time at all he was blushing so hard he looked like a giant strawberry. He hadn't even thought about it before. With the blindfold on it kinda just seemed to... I dunno, suit her? It didn't seem as weird as it did now.

"Y-Yeah! Here, le-lemme go get you some!" he shouted, flustered. He practically ran up the stairs into his mom's room, looking for some loose-fitting clothes like sweaters or old jeans.

He hadn't turned to stone yet, but something else certainly had...

After splashing himself with cold water and giving himself a minute to calm down, Ren returned with some of his baggier sweatshirts and hoodies as well as a few pairs of his mom's old jeans. He gave them to Rider. Much to his embarrassment, he'd noticed while picking out outfits that the size of clothing he and his mother wore weren't actually all that different, painfully reminding him of how short he was for someone his age. 

He sighed. Hopefully his sweaters wouldn't be too small for Rider to wear. They wouldn't have many options left if they were, besides an impromptu shopping spree. 

"How are they? Do you think they'll fit?" he asked cautiously.
[/hider]