[@SIGINT]

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[color=0072bc][quote]Airi turned towards Nakae, who was still quite a bit taller than her despite being younger than most of the other Masters. Honestly, she had been starting to wonder why it was all 30-year-olds here. "Oh hey, we saw each other at the church! You said you were heading to a convenience store." The girl recounted, with a grin. "You missed out, man. Ruler announced the free food like, right after that. You coulda saved some money."
 
The guy's outfit was a little thrown-together, and he looked...kinda ill? Well, he did lose his Servant, that couldn't have come easily to him. "Uh...well, that's good. I don't know a whole lot about Demons, I just know they're bad news." The girl admitted, slowly munching on the further half of burger number eight. "Apparently a bunch of my relatives died from one...Or like, a half-one...I never knew 'em or anything, but still, like, damn, you know?"
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He shook his head. [color=662d91]“I can eat still. Besides, I need something for later.” [/color]Left unsaid was the somber fact that it wouldn’t matter if he died in the near future. But he wasn’t going in this with the intent to lose. With a much more normal, albeit still voracious hunger of the student who was equal parts too lazy and apathetic to cook something and yet enjoyed the simple pleasures of life, especially in his solitude, he began to grab at what he could, starting on his own binging. Without much care for his manners he ate, swiftly, silently, a bit clumsily, in a manner that made the number of napkins at his part of the table slowly build up. 
 
[color=662d91]“I don’t know anything about them. I don’t even know anything about magic or anything. I guess to put it one way I knew about the supernatural, but nothing about it, the same way normal people know about a train, but nothing about how they work, what models they are and the details. A train is just a train, the supernatural was just the supernatural. I fell into this war's lap in a way."[/color]
 
He rubbed at his face and shook his head again, towards her before returning his focus to the food again. 
 
[color=0072bc][quote]"I'm, uh, not really thinking about it."
 
"Well, you know...treating this like it's some kind of opportunity to get ahead, using it to scout people or throw them under the bus, or shit like that...that kind of teamwork doesn't get you very far." Airi said simply, setting the stack of empty plates aside. "I ran with a crew back in Western Tokyo...sometimes, we'd tussle with gangs that weren't put together very well. And you know what? It showed. It showed in the way they walked down the street together, in the way they fought...and you damn well better believe it showed in what they were able to accomplish." It was a rural area, or at least, as rural as Tokyo could possibly be, which wasn't very. There had always been the sharp and painful contrast between the Shinjuku high-rises she saw when visiting Yuko, and the empty lots that littered the place she and Hana called home. "A team like that is just the sum of its parts. We took 'em down like it was nothing, no matter how many of them there were. My crew was just three people, but our teamwork wasn't some half-hearted bullshit. I didn't roll that way back then, and I'm not changing up my style now."
 
"Yeah, there'll be a time when we're all enemies again. And I'll think about being enemies at that time." Airi admitted, "But, right now, it's the time for us to be friends. And I'll think about being friends at that time. There's no sense in tripping myself up on anything else."
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Exactly what he was doing in a way, but also because he was too weak to stand on his own.Still, even if someone wasn’t doing that, friends?
 
[color=662d91]"That’s an odd way of putting it. Friends is a strong word for people you work with for a short time before killing them. If anything, isn’t that the cruelest or worst way to put it?”[/color]
 
He put his burger down, and waved some juice stained fingers at his direction. His lips moved and his face slowly craned down as though it was going to plant itself onto the table.
 
[color=662d91]“ That sounds way worse than anything else. You’re making something that’s already unpleasant even more painful, more horrible. It sounds sad. It sounds dumb. It sounds mad.”[/color]
 
…
 
Ah, those were suppose to be in his head. He ended up whispering it, didn’t he? Whispers that snuck under her words, skulking about, trying to be unheard. It felt a bit like how those who would be thinking of the future instead of the now with this joint-venture were acting. He whipped his head back up to see if she noticed, face suddenly presented with hers as she reached out. His locks of hair sprawled out of his face, revealing his eyes clearly for once from the motion, leaving him a bit surprised and almost flinching back from her.

[color=0072bc] [quote]With a rare smile, the girl extended out a hand to Nakae, offering a handshake.

"So, how about it? Wanna be friends?"
 
Izumi Airi's voice was oddly devoid of its usual roughness at that moment. It was still unmistakably her, but at the same time, there was an earnestness there, a simple joy that she partook in as any human did. In that crystallized moment, she was just a youthful person who enjoyed making connections with people for its own sake. 
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It hurt, it hurt ah… it hurt. He looked away, then looked back at her, torn between seeing her to protect himself and trying to escape it completely. “Let’s be friends.” It was a thing he heard of course before, but he couldn’t accept it. It’d fall apart, and he’d be alone, and that was the best. What was the point of being around someone like him with these eyes? What was the point of someone like him being with others? To be around others was painful, but that pain was still better if he couldn’t put a name to it.
 
It’s just pain, nothing more. Stay nothing, be nothing, you have to or else it will hurt even more.
 
Even when he looked his gaze seemed to want to avoid her and his eyes focused on strange places, places that people did not usually focus on with other people.
 
Even after seeing [color=ed145b][b]that [/b][/color]he didn’t want this. What was good? Everything felt more like a lack of bad to him, especially now.
 
He reached out with his hand, he’d take what was good and learn about it. Betray? Learn? Well, maybe this play at whatever this was would end with her simply dead from something else. His e hand moved before he thought about it, and his mind was simply trying to catch up, to offer justification. In the end, faced with all that was punishing in the world he found himself with want. Want to push him into the madness that was to continue to fight, to go despite knowing that [color=ed145b][b]she [/b][/color]without doubt waited at the end of the road.
 
I want to be happy.
 
Is this a way? What was the path to it? It didn’t matter what it was, but he’d take them as offered until he finally found his way.

This was a war about wishes, right?
 
[color=0054a6]“Sure.”[/color]