MoM App
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Susan
AGE: 25
JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soozaphone
IM / EMAIL: AIM: soozaphone
PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
soozaphone
RETURNING: N/A
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Shinjiro Aragaki (no alias. YET.)
CHARACTER AGE: 18
SERIES: Persona 3
CHRONOLOGY: Around midnight, October 4th, 2009 – Just after his death
CLASS: He’s a reluctant hero, ha ha! Sort of Neutral good, leaning Chaotic good, if that makes sense. He wants to do the right thing, but damn if he doesn’t have a weird perspective of what the right thing is.
HOUSING: Yeah, gimme some random roomies!
BACKGROUND: Shinjiro lives in 2009 Japan, which is very close to our own world, with the exception of a nightly distortion of space/time that normal people aren’t perceptive of. He and other Persona Users are able to remain conscious during this time and try and keep the Shadows (monsters) that roam about it from snacking on innocents.
Or, that’s how it should be. In reality, Shinjiro’s main role in the game is to show a theme of stagnation. He joins (and dies) right around the middle of the game, when the rest of the characters are gathering up their will to fight and resolutely carry on, and Shinjiro can’t let go of the past, to the point that it consumes him. He’s distant and detached, and too absorbed in his own issues and guilt to really connect or care about the rest of the team, with the exception of his bff Akihiko, and the kid Ken, whose mother’s death Shinjiro is responsible for. (And even then he doesn’t care about Ken so much as feel obligated to give the kid the vengeance he seeks.)
He’s a punk-ass delinquent who dropped out of highschool, lives on the streets, and has a huge expanse of gray shades in his ethics. (For example, when he sells information on his team for drugs to control his abilities.)
The play by play of his history can be found On the wikia.
What I’ll focus on here more is his abstract “role” in the game. As the wiki states: He was an orphan, grew up with his best friend Akihiko, continue supporting his best friend even after Akihiko’s sister died, and awakened to the potential to wield a Persona. He and Akihiko are recruited by Mitsuru, and try to go out and fight Shadows and save the city from the unseen threat. Unfortunately, Shinjiro can’t control his Persona well, it goes out of control, and it kills an innocent bystander: Ken Amada’s mother.
And that’s where the stagnation comes into play. Shinjiro doesn’t try and learn how to work around his Persona issues- he runs from them. He can’t forgive himself, can’t forget it, can’t accept that it was an accident. He takes lethal drugs that offer him a chance of controlling his Persona, and tells himself that this is the only option and only right thing to do. He’s not willing to find another way, simply says his death is the only option and storms towards it full-force.
In this, he acts as a foil (in the literary sense), to complement and contrast with the other team members, as well as offer Akihiko and Ken a catalyst for their own character developments. (He’s a woman in a fridge, if you’ll excuse the trope.) While the rest are able to move on past their mistakes and issues, Shinjiro is not, and in the end, he dies because of it.
(The death of Ken’s mother is really one of the only major canon events he’s involved with—that and his own death, of course.)
PERSONALITY:
At a glance, Shinjiro is pretty much everything you'd expect from some go-nowhere, teenage punk alleytrash. He's stubborn, needs a haircut, speaks crudely and bluntly, hovers in a permanent moral shade of gray, has no visible motivation or goals, and is hasn't shown up to school in two years. (Don't ask me how he's still on the roster, other than someone pulling strings out of pity.) He's rough in his speech and mannerisms, and fits the juvenile delinquent trope so well, it's almost like he's doing it on purpose.
Which.... he pretty much is.
From his words to his tone to his body language, he lacks tact. Shinjiro tends to forgo honorifics when talking to other people: No –san's or –senpai's or anything of the sort, typically falling back to simple last-name basis to create a sort of distance and boundary. He's rough with his verbiage, slipping in swears and slang casually and tending to get right to the point of what he's trying to say. He has no reservations about giving his opinion if he's asked and sometimes even when he's not, though it's never done with the intention of tearing anyone down or drawing judgments. He has no problem letting someone know they're being a dumbass—and yeah, maybe he thinks they're pretty stupid too. But that doesn't mean he'll think less of them, just that they're dense, if that makes sense. In interacting with people, he treats pretty much everyone with the same ambivalence and lack of respect (though not outright disrespect).
Though back to giving his opinion: Yes, he'll speak his mind, but never all of it. Omission and evasion are well-honed skills for Shinjiro. He's not a liar, of course—hell, he's terrible at straight-up lying, with a habit of looking away and refusing eye-contact when he's consciously doing so. But that doesn't mean that he'll tell someone everything, and that he won't withhold just enough of the truth to allow them to believe something else. Failing that, he'll just be stubborn and refuse to tell someone. (Immature, sure, but effective.) Despite the casual manner in which he interacts with most anyone he speaks with, he's perceptive enough to put thought into almost everything he says: because again, there's a need for distance and boundaries with him.
Shinjiro rarely grows close to anyone, the tough-as-nails, aloof facade helping to deter any would-be friends, especially once returning to SEES. He has little desire for personal ties or connections in game, displaying confusion when the main character invites him out to see a movie, and generally appearing disinterested in anyone and anything.
But all that's appearances. In reality, Shinjiro has a remarkably caring side, and a strong sense of morality. It's just skewed. When originally joining SEES, Shinjiro made a promise with Akihiko to 'use their powers to do what they think is right', something that Shinjiro has always upheld: though through the years he's become jaded about how much intentions really matter when it comes to the end results. (More on this in a bit.)
It shows in strange ways in canon: Three of the younger members of SEES first meet him when they wander into the wrong part of town looking for information and wind up with a fist in the gut and promises of (potentially sexual) violation against Yukari: And not knowing these random kids, Shinjiro steps in to just tell the punks to step down. He essentially rescues the three younger students, and all before recognizing them as people he'd seen with Akihiko previously. While he berates them for doing something as stupid as wandering into an alleyway and insulting the volatile bunch that hung out there, tells them to get their asses out of the wrong side of town, he still gives them the information they need: And the fact still stands that he stepped in to save a group he'd never really met. If he didn't care as much as he pretended, he could have just let it happen.
He's also fond of dogs, going out of his way to take care of Koromaru, and has a hobby of cooking: a carry-over from growing up, but a skill he still shows interest in. It all stems from wanting to make sure others are taken care of, to assist in his own way, to be supporting.
All this raises some questions, though: Why bother with the facade of street-trash, hiding a perceptive and caring core? Why try so desperately to sever ties, and yet still step in to help people?
Well, it's all because Shinjiro is set on dying, and harbors a massive guilt-complex.
Which brings us back to his striving to do what he feels is right and his skewed sense of morality. Two years before the game, in trying to do what was right (Using his powers to help the greater good, to track down and hunt shadows, essentially keeping the island safe,) he disregarded the warnings of his teammates: that his Persona, Castor was too volatile and difficult for him to control. They asked him to step off the team, and he refused, choosing to try and help rather than heed the (what he viewed as,) small risk of his Persona breaking free.
Which, as you've read in the history up there, ended in the death of an innocent woman. So, with his Persona dangerous enough to break from his control and nearly demolish a home, killing a bystander and orphaning her son, he choose to do what he felt was right: Leaving SEES, cutting ties, and taking Persona Suppressants, despite the risk of them. (In all cases the drugs are eventually lethal: but the choice is kill himself, or let his Persona attack someone else again.)
And again, he tries to do what he feels is right: if he keeps in contact with his friends, or grows close to anyone, he'd only be hurting them all over again with his inevitable death. He knows he's dying, so it's not right to selfishly make connections or seek ties or burden another with his own issues.
He can't forgive himself for her death: there were no consequences, as it was written off as a freak accident, a truck hitting the building and killing her (as it took place during the dark hour with no witnesses, and the influential Kirijo Group sponsored SEES,) and no one really knew the truth—so it would be cowardly to just pretend that it didn't happen. And the hypocritical fact that it's just as cowardly to run through his death? Is something that really helps define the complex mess of morals and desperate trying that is his interior self.
The Badass Punk Street-Trash facade is far, far simpler.
As I’ll be pulling him from after his death, I’m hoping that I can develop the character towards—well, not wanting to die all the damn time. Actually trying like a normal person. With his death, he’s released from that responsibility, in a way—or at least distanced enough to continue lying to himself, and claiming that he’s done everything he could, and that everything worked out the best way possible. It’s deluded and self-serving and ultimately probably major signs of depression, but that’s just how he rolls, yo. Aragaki-lyfe.
POWER:
In canon, Shinjiro wields the Persona Castor, which is fine and good, and I don’t mind describing his abilities, but--! I’d actually like to ask for him not to have it, and be able to have some new powers.
The reason I ask this is because of his issues when it comes to controlling his Persona (taking drugs to keep it reined in, etc) as well as his constant and general fear of it breaking loose and harming people. He’ll always resent his persona, and to be honest, I feel it would be easier to break him out of his cranky-asshole-shell without the thing.
IF THAT’S COOL, than the power I’d like to give him is this… though I’m not sure how to word it concisely, ha ha.
Basically, it would involve being able to wither/decay/rot things on touch, as well as able to use that same sort of energy absorbed to mend or heal things. For instance: Able to cause a chain-link fence to completely rust-over, providing enough energy to heal a small-to-moderate sized cut, or other very minor injury.
The idea is that inanimate or inorganic matter would provide very little to work with, and trying to heal or mend would take a lot. There’s also the complexity to take into account, when it comes to learning it: (For example, causing an apple to rot through might be simple, but causing a person to wither and die would be a complex and time-consuming ordeal. Also wow he definitely would not want to do that.) I feel this would help the ability sort of auto-balance itself, and make it reasonable (Rather than getting into ‘everything I touch dies!!!’ or ‘here lemme make this wooden chair rot and bring your uncle ben back to life pete’ territory)
Also- to kind of think about it in RPG/Video game terms- He likely has a limit of how much life-energy he can store at any given time. (Think of it like a MP meter, I guess...?) And the only way to build it up would be my draining/deteriorating other things. So he starts at "zero", and can idk rot crops and make a building structurally unsound or something until he's at "One hundred" and then after that he can't keep storing and keep storing to store up heals. (This is how it works in my head at least, it would not be MP Bar/percentages in game or in prose, promise!)
Another limit would be that it would be based on contact (though contact through clothing I imagine would work also), and that any deterioration or restoration would be strongest at that point of contact, potentially able to spread farther from it with extra effort and practice, but still requiring an initial contact.
My hope is for him to be a more supportive/auxiliary team-member, as opposed to a lone wolf powerhouse, which means that he’d be most effective when working with groups (and therefore forcing reasons for CR onto him, ha ha.) Good for rusting out locks and mending small injuries—and maybe a bit more once he actually gets to practicing with it.
[NOTE- after already writing all that up, I came across Life-force Manipulation and Death-force Manipulation on the Superpower wikia, and they seem the closest to an explanation that I can find. Personally, I feel "Deterioration" and "Restoration" sort of describe it more accurately, or more clearly.]
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: Test drive meme!
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Saying that the morning had been a whirlwind would be cliché, stupid, and completely over-simplifying. And yet, that was the only thing that really felt right to Shinjiro as the door closed behind him to his new room (‘Florida, United States’- fuck.) and for the first time since waking, he had a moment to breathe, shut his eyes, and try to sort this all out in his head.
He’s supposed to be dead. That’s the fact he knows with absolute certainty, and the muted, neutral typed-font on his ‘medical records’ had agreed with him, listing him as deceased, complete with cause. (Multiple gunshot wounds resulting in—well, whatever the medical speak for his liver bleeding out and his lungs being shredded.) And yet here he stood, back against the door, holding onto the paperwork and folders the clean-cut, badged-and-ribboned suits had shoved into his hands while trying to fit a whole explanation into the brief car ride here. His chest still rises and falls when he breathes, and aches and burns when he doesn’t.
Even knowing that, it’s impossible to continue denying the reality of the moment. No matter how surreal it feels, landing on the cock-end of America shortly after his death and being told he’s a superhero, the fact of the matter is that there’s no point in pretending he’ll wake up back home—or better yet, just fade to black and into the fatalistic nothingness of death.
So he pushes himself off from the door, idly tossing the folder and papers onto the ready-made bed, and lifting a hand up to run through his bangs (removing the too-warm, slightly-sweaty beanie as he does so.)
“…Think they’d be able to find better ‘heroes’.” Shinjiro scoffs the words out loud, knows that there won’t be anyone to hear him or to have a conversation with him—but just any sort of noise filling up that damned white silence in the room, between the soft whir of the air conditioner and his own fucking breaths—anything helps filter out that rising tension and stress at trying to figure out what to do now. How to adjust his grand plans (that would have ended with his death however long ago) into being recruited by the American military for… who knows what. His brows furrow and crease, nose wrinkling up in distaste at the thought of it- but really, he doesn’t have enough information to make any real opinion of decision in regards to that whole mess.
So he’ll have to start where he can. Return to the papers, try and understand what’s detailed in the explanation of these new powers he supposedly had. Then lunch. Maybe explore the area of the town around his lodging. And maybe then he’ll return to the complete existential mindfuck involved in returning from the dead to supposedly fight another country’s minor law battles.
FINAL NOTES: uhh this is picky, but if Shinjiro could not work at a restaurant, that would be awesome. ;w; HE CAN COOK, SO HE ALWAYS ENDS UP IN THEM, so I’m hoping for something different/new~ Thanks guys! (totes fine with something that makes sense, or is ridiculous. Whichev,)
NAME: Susan
AGE: 25
JOURNAL:
soozaphoneIM / EMAIL: AIM: soozaphone
PLURK:
RETURNING: N/A
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Shinjiro Aragaki (no alias. YET.)
CHARACTER AGE: 18
SERIES: Persona 3
CHRONOLOGY: Around midnight, October 4th, 2009 – Just after his death
CLASS: He’s a reluctant hero, ha ha! Sort of Neutral good, leaning Chaotic good, if that makes sense. He wants to do the right thing, but damn if he doesn’t have a weird perspective of what the right thing is.
HOUSING: Yeah, gimme some random roomies!
BACKGROUND: Shinjiro lives in 2009 Japan, which is very close to our own world, with the exception of a nightly distortion of space/time that normal people aren’t perceptive of. He and other Persona Users are able to remain conscious during this time and try and keep the Shadows (monsters) that roam about it from snacking on innocents.
Or, that’s how it should be. In reality, Shinjiro’s main role in the game is to show a theme of stagnation. He joins (and dies) right around the middle of the game, when the rest of the characters are gathering up their will to fight and resolutely carry on, and Shinjiro can’t let go of the past, to the point that it consumes him. He’s distant and detached, and too absorbed in his own issues and guilt to really connect or care about the rest of the team, with the exception of his bff Akihiko, and the kid Ken, whose mother’s death Shinjiro is responsible for. (And even then he doesn’t care about Ken so much as feel obligated to give the kid the vengeance he seeks.)
He’s a punk-ass delinquent who dropped out of highschool, lives on the streets, and has a huge expanse of gray shades in his ethics. (For example, when he sells information on his team for drugs to control his abilities.)
The play by play of his history can be found On the wikia.
What I’ll focus on here more is his abstract “role” in the game. As the wiki states: He was an orphan, grew up with his best friend Akihiko, continue supporting his best friend even after Akihiko’s sister died, and awakened to the potential to wield a Persona. He and Akihiko are recruited by Mitsuru, and try to go out and fight Shadows and save the city from the unseen threat. Unfortunately, Shinjiro can’t control his Persona well, it goes out of control, and it kills an innocent bystander: Ken Amada’s mother.
And that’s where the stagnation comes into play. Shinjiro doesn’t try and learn how to work around his Persona issues- he runs from them. He can’t forgive himself, can’t forget it, can’t accept that it was an accident. He takes lethal drugs that offer him a chance of controlling his Persona, and tells himself that this is the only option and only right thing to do. He’s not willing to find another way, simply says his death is the only option and storms towards it full-force.
In this, he acts as a foil (in the literary sense), to complement and contrast with the other team members, as well as offer Akihiko and Ken a catalyst for their own character developments. (He’s a woman in a fridge, if you’ll excuse the trope.) While the rest are able to move on past their mistakes and issues, Shinjiro is not, and in the end, he dies because of it.
(The death of Ken’s mother is really one of the only major canon events he’s involved with—that and his own death, of course.)
PERSONALITY:
At a glance, Shinjiro is pretty much everything you'd expect from some go-nowhere, teenage punk alleytrash. He's stubborn, needs a haircut, speaks crudely and bluntly, hovers in a permanent moral shade of gray, has no visible motivation or goals, and is hasn't shown up to school in two years. (Don't ask me how he's still on the roster, other than someone pulling strings out of pity.) He's rough in his speech and mannerisms, and fits the juvenile delinquent trope so well, it's almost like he's doing it on purpose.
Which.... he pretty much is.
From his words to his tone to his body language, he lacks tact. Shinjiro tends to forgo honorifics when talking to other people: No –san's or –senpai's or anything of the sort, typically falling back to simple last-name basis to create a sort of distance and boundary. He's rough with his verbiage, slipping in swears and slang casually and tending to get right to the point of what he's trying to say. He has no reservations about giving his opinion if he's asked and sometimes even when he's not, though it's never done with the intention of tearing anyone down or drawing judgments. He has no problem letting someone know they're being a dumbass—and yeah, maybe he thinks they're pretty stupid too. But that doesn't mean he'll think less of them, just that they're dense, if that makes sense. In interacting with people, he treats pretty much everyone with the same ambivalence and lack of respect (though not outright disrespect).
Though back to giving his opinion: Yes, he'll speak his mind, but never all of it. Omission and evasion are well-honed skills for Shinjiro. He's not a liar, of course—hell, he's terrible at straight-up lying, with a habit of looking away and refusing eye-contact when he's consciously doing so. But that doesn't mean that he'll tell someone everything, and that he won't withhold just enough of the truth to allow them to believe something else. Failing that, he'll just be stubborn and refuse to tell someone. (Immature, sure, but effective.) Despite the casual manner in which he interacts with most anyone he speaks with, he's perceptive enough to put thought into almost everything he says: because again, there's a need for distance and boundaries with him.
Shinjiro rarely grows close to anyone, the tough-as-nails, aloof facade helping to deter any would-be friends, especially once returning to SEES. He has little desire for personal ties or connections in game, displaying confusion when the main character invites him out to see a movie, and generally appearing disinterested in anyone and anything.
But all that's appearances. In reality, Shinjiro has a remarkably caring side, and a strong sense of morality. It's just skewed. When originally joining SEES, Shinjiro made a promise with Akihiko to 'use their powers to do what they think is right', something that Shinjiro has always upheld: though through the years he's become jaded about how much intentions really matter when it comes to the end results. (More on this in a bit.)
It shows in strange ways in canon: Three of the younger members of SEES first meet him when they wander into the wrong part of town looking for information and wind up with a fist in the gut and promises of (potentially sexual) violation against Yukari: And not knowing these random kids, Shinjiro steps in to just tell the punks to step down. He essentially rescues the three younger students, and all before recognizing them as people he'd seen with Akihiko previously. While he berates them for doing something as stupid as wandering into an alleyway and insulting the volatile bunch that hung out there, tells them to get their asses out of the wrong side of town, he still gives them the information they need: And the fact still stands that he stepped in to save a group he'd never really met. If he didn't care as much as he pretended, he could have just let it happen.
He's also fond of dogs, going out of his way to take care of Koromaru, and has a hobby of cooking: a carry-over from growing up, but a skill he still shows interest in. It all stems from wanting to make sure others are taken care of, to assist in his own way, to be supporting.
All this raises some questions, though: Why bother with the facade of street-trash, hiding a perceptive and caring core? Why try so desperately to sever ties, and yet still step in to help people?
Well, it's all because Shinjiro is set on dying, and harbors a massive guilt-complex.
Which brings us back to his striving to do what he feels is right and his skewed sense of morality. Two years before the game, in trying to do what was right (Using his powers to help the greater good, to track down and hunt shadows, essentially keeping the island safe,) he disregarded the warnings of his teammates: that his Persona, Castor was too volatile and difficult for him to control. They asked him to step off the team, and he refused, choosing to try and help rather than heed the (what he viewed as,) small risk of his Persona breaking free.
Which, as you've read in the history up there, ended in the death of an innocent woman. So, with his Persona dangerous enough to break from his control and nearly demolish a home, killing a bystander and orphaning her son, he choose to do what he felt was right: Leaving SEES, cutting ties, and taking Persona Suppressants, despite the risk of them. (In all cases the drugs are eventually lethal: but the choice is kill himself, or let his Persona attack someone else again.)
And again, he tries to do what he feels is right: if he keeps in contact with his friends, or grows close to anyone, he'd only be hurting them all over again with his inevitable death. He knows he's dying, so it's not right to selfishly make connections or seek ties or burden another with his own issues.
He can't forgive himself for her death: there were no consequences, as it was written off as a freak accident, a truck hitting the building and killing her (as it took place during the dark hour with no witnesses, and the influential Kirijo Group sponsored SEES,) and no one really knew the truth—so it would be cowardly to just pretend that it didn't happen. And the hypocritical fact that it's just as cowardly to run through his death? Is something that really helps define the complex mess of morals and desperate trying that is his interior self.
The Badass Punk Street-Trash facade is far, far simpler.
As I’ll be pulling him from after his death, I’m hoping that I can develop the character towards—well, not wanting to die all the damn time. Actually trying like a normal person. With his death, he’s released from that responsibility, in a way—or at least distanced enough to continue lying to himself, and claiming that he’s done everything he could, and that everything worked out the best way possible. It’s deluded and self-serving and ultimately probably major signs of depression, but that’s just how he rolls, yo. Aragaki-lyfe.
POWER:
In canon, Shinjiro wields the Persona Castor, which is fine and good, and I don’t mind describing his abilities, but--! I’d actually like to ask for him not to have it, and be able to have some new powers.
The reason I ask this is because of his issues when it comes to controlling his Persona (taking drugs to keep it reined in, etc) as well as his constant and general fear of it breaking loose and harming people. He’ll always resent his persona, and to be honest, I feel it would be easier to break him out of his cranky-asshole-shell without the thing.
IF THAT’S COOL, than the power I’d like to give him is this… though I’m not sure how to word it concisely, ha ha.
Basically, it would involve being able to wither/decay/rot things on touch, as well as able to use that same sort of energy absorbed to mend or heal things. For instance: Able to cause a chain-link fence to completely rust-over, providing enough energy to heal a small-to-moderate sized cut, or other very minor injury.
The idea is that inanimate or inorganic matter would provide very little to work with, and trying to heal or mend would take a lot. There’s also the complexity to take into account, when it comes to learning it: (For example, causing an apple to rot through might be simple, but causing a person to wither and die would be a complex and time-consuming ordeal. Also wow he definitely would not want to do that.) I feel this would help the ability sort of auto-balance itself, and make it reasonable (Rather than getting into ‘everything I touch dies!!!’ or ‘here lemme make this wooden chair rot and bring your uncle ben back to life pete’ territory)
Also- to kind of think about it in RPG/Video game terms- He likely has a limit of how much life-energy he can store at any given time. (Think of it like a MP meter, I guess...?) And the only way to build it up would be my draining/deteriorating other things. So he starts at "zero", and can idk rot crops and make a building structurally unsound or something until he's at "One hundred" and then after that he can't keep storing and keep storing to store up heals. (This is how it works in my head at least, it would not be MP Bar/percentages in game or in prose, promise!)
Another limit would be that it would be based on contact (though contact through clothing I imagine would work also), and that any deterioration or restoration would be strongest at that point of contact, potentially able to spread farther from it with extra effort and practice, but still requiring an initial contact.
My hope is for him to be a more supportive/auxiliary team-member, as opposed to a lone wolf powerhouse, which means that he’d be most effective when working with groups (and therefore forcing reasons for CR onto him, ha ha.) Good for rusting out locks and mending small injuries—and maybe a bit more once he actually gets to practicing with it.
[NOTE- after already writing all that up, I came across Life-force Manipulation and Death-force Manipulation on the Superpower wikia, and they seem the closest to an explanation that I can find. Personally, I feel "Deterioration" and "Restoration" sort of describe it more accurately, or more clearly.]
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: Test drive meme!
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Saying that the morning had been a whirlwind would be cliché, stupid, and completely over-simplifying. And yet, that was the only thing that really felt right to Shinjiro as the door closed behind him to his new room (‘Florida, United States’- fuck.) and for the first time since waking, he had a moment to breathe, shut his eyes, and try to sort this all out in his head.
He’s supposed to be dead. That’s the fact he knows with absolute certainty, and the muted, neutral typed-font on his ‘medical records’ had agreed with him, listing him as deceased, complete with cause. (Multiple gunshot wounds resulting in—well, whatever the medical speak for his liver bleeding out and his lungs being shredded.) And yet here he stood, back against the door, holding onto the paperwork and folders the clean-cut, badged-and-ribboned suits had shoved into his hands while trying to fit a whole explanation into the brief car ride here. His chest still rises and falls when he breathes, and aches and burns when he doesn’t.
Even knowing that, it’s impossible to continue denying the reality of the moment. No matter how surreal it feels, landing on the cock-end of America shortly after his death and being told he’s a superhero, the fact of the matter is that there’s no point in pretending he’ll wake up back home—or better yet, just fade to black and into the fatalistic nothingness of death.
So he pushes himself off from the door, idly tossing the folder and papers onto the ready-made bed, and lifting a hand up to run through his bangs (removing the too-warm, slightly-sweaty beanie as he does so.)
“…Think they’d be able to find better ‘heroes’.” Shinjiro scoffs the words out loud, knows that there won’t be anyone to hear him or to have a conversation with him—but just any sort of noise filling up that damned white silence in the room, between the soft whir of the air conditioner and his own fucking breaths—anything helps filter out that rising tension and stress at trying to figure out what to do now. How to adjust his grand plans (that would have ended with his death however long ago) into being recruited by the American military for… who knows what. His brows furrow and crease, nose wrinkling up in distaste at the thought of it- but really, he doesn’t have enough information to make any real opinion of decision in regards to that whole mess.
So he’ll have to start where he can. Return to the papers, try and understand what’s detailed in the explanation of these new powers he supposedly had. Then lunch. Maybe explore the area of the town around his lodging. And maybe then he’ll return to the complete existential mindfuck involved in returning from the dead to supposedly fight another country’s minor law battles.
FINAL NOTES: uhh this is picky, but if Shinjiro could not work at a restaurant, that would be awesome. ;w; HE CAN COOK, SO HE ALWAYS ENDS UP IN THEM, so I’m hoping for something different/new~ Thanks guys! (totes fine with something that makes sense, or is ridiculous. Whichev,)