With each smack of a scuffed forest-green sneaker on the floor, Souta's stride grew slower.  He meandered one hallway after another unconscious of the change, aware instead of the irony that a place so permeated by heat would be so coldly stark.  On his trip through the Citadel, he encountered no living thing.  Even the watchers, unbound by a more corporeal creature's avenues of locomotion, and uninterested in wasting time with a human ostensibly on their side, avoided him.  Instead, the smith traced with his eyes the veins of lava that ran helter-skelter across the walls and ceilings of the corridors through which he walked.  Before long, he crossed the threshold of the room he'd claimed as his own, and the instant he closed the door he slumped over.  Sustained by leftover adrenalin, maybe, he hadn't quite noticed until now just how drained he felt.  A puppet with his strings cut, he sagged over to the bed prepared for him by the watchers and flopped into it face-first.  There, fully clothed, he lay motionless.

After a few moments, he couldn't help but to roll over to avoid oxygen deprivation.  His eyes, though, remained shut.  It wasn't sleepiness that afflicted him, but exhaustion all the same.  For the first time, he rolled his eyes up into his head and wondered [i]why[/i].  A tear slid down his cheek, not from sadness but from the fact that in all the action he'd forgotten to blink as often.  The same thing, he remembered, happened after logging a few hours straight on a video game.  Just the thought made him long for the comforts of home, the distraction of a virtual world in particular.  After all, despite his armor -be it water or stone- he'd been rattled by the whole experience.  Even now, in his crash, he could feel his nerves jittering.  The Nephilim and demons could look down on him all they wanted, but Souta knew that he wasn't cut out for this.  Enjoying the odd scrap with some punks meant nothing when it came to battling eldritch monstrosities from another dimension, and no amount of combat training could have prepared the smith for something like that.  What was he doing here?  A weapon maker and designer, and a mere human to boot, expected to kick ass and take names alongside beings born and bred for slaughter?

Souta groaned.  He missed far more than just the games of home.  He missed the structure and routine—knowing what to do, when to do it, and how to excel.  Here, he felt as though he were caught in a constant riptide, rushing him from one ridiculous situation to the next.  Things had worked out so far, but who knew when some monster might turn its attention toward him?  He remembered the malformed homunculus created by the Creatrix, with its arm poised to crush him like an ant.  Worse still, he recalled the little demon girl that had been a part of his party and, without anyone even noticing, disappeared.  He remembered that she had blonde hair and horns, but not a single detail of her face.  Would he share that fate, he wondered, or survive long enough that someone might remember him when he was gone?

He missed more than consistency and security, however.  Though he'd never admit it to her face, Souta missed his sister.  Even if the two had gone separate paths, she never held anything against him.  Few knew that Otsune was far, far less robotic than she looked when it came to the soul, and in her Souta knew he had a friend he could always count on.  Yet, his sister couldn't be father away now.  And what of his other friends?  Souta missed Babyfingers, Petard, Fortunato, Ophelia, Enoch, Estragon, Atlas, Prospero, and of course, Ell.  Even loud-mouthed Katherina would have been a sight for sore eyes now.  Among the Agents, the only ones weren't savages, freaks, or both were highly dismissive of him.  Just thinking of Akoni made him smolder.  Why did the Council pick him?  He suspected that they needed a smith, and wanted to test his mettle before he forged their metal.  [i]Just great.  It's like interning all over again.  Just a bit more dangerous.  Bosses aren't as hot-tempered or thickheaded, though.[/i]  He sat up, turning himself against the wall.  It was comfortably warm to the touch.  [color=teal]“Well,”[/color] he muttered aloud. [color=teal]“It's not like I can just quit, unless I wanna end up like that one guy.”[/color]  The scream of a man, even a moron, cooked inside his own melting armor had not helped his sleeping situation.

A few minutes passed before he heaved himself to his feet and headed for his room's second door.  He entered the Nascent Forge to see it outfitted with a few more tools than last time.  [color=teal]“Computer or no, I've always got something I can pound to feel better.”[/color]  Silence filled the room as he considered what he just said.  [i]I'm done talking,[/i] he concluded with an eye roll before he moved to inspect what he'd been given.  If he couldn't live longer, fight harder, run faster, be smarter, or be better-looking than anyone else here, he could still cling to the one thing he knew for sure: an art ignored by the rest for its insignificance.  Donning a thick mitt of some unidentifiable hide, he picked up a dented, dull metal sword from a pile of scrap in one corner and plunged it into a crucible of lava standing in the room's center.  When the  business end of the metal was red-hot, he moved to the anvil and picked up a hammer.  Water streamed around him, shielding him from the heat as he did so.  Among the new implements available to him was a hydraulic press, which would have made flattening the heated blade in order to reshape it a cinch, but Souta felt like doing things the old-fashioned way just now.  A bellow  wrenched its way from his throat as he smashed the tool against the fiery metal.  [i]CLANG[/i].  No hopeful resolution lifted his spirits.  He was here to stay, as good as a prisoner.  [i]CLANG[/i].  There was nobody who would cut him a break or give him a hand.  Humanity meant nothing in this place.  [i]CLANG.[/i]  So here he would stand, clinging to the one thing he knew for sure.