"I don't work for free. If you want my help, your payment will be: teaching me how you've cheated death, Fujisaki-san" the man behind the desk grinned. Though deathly serious, he was restraining rampant nerves. This was his first real chance at overcoming the abyss that he felt looming.
"So cheap a fee?" His guest asked, "You would not have me make you a trickster god."
"What do you take me for?"
"True." The magician smiled "You will be my first student in a century."
Yato had been called to Ikebukuro, he expected a job, no matter how menial or ungrateful the person making the request would be. Instead he was greeted by two sets of starry eyes, and expressions of astonishment and joy, which caused sighs in the people sitting around behind them, apparently less able to see him than the two who'd summoned him
He could get used to this… Except… why was it happening?
"Err…" He was thrown off his script "Well here I am. Just give your problems to Deliv…"
"Delivery God Yato" The man exploded. In more awe than anything, looking at him with
"MAY OUR FATES INTERTWINE! YUKINE IS THAT YOU?" The girl squealed, and nearly knocked Yukine to the ground trying to hug him and ruffle his hair.
"You've… Heard of me?" Yato looked around. This wasn't somewhere he'd ever vandalized. It was the middle of nowhere, under an underpass that had some sort of construction on either side.
"Gettoffmewoman!" Yukine tried to say around the woman's snuggling.
"No! I can't! You're too cute!" She replied without missing a beat.
"Erika, Stop molesting thin air… someone might see…" Said a man, leaning against the door of a van behind them.
"Dotachin? You can't see Yukine? He's adorableness personified!" she said, and the man, apparently named Dotachin shrugged and opened a book.
"Sekki!" Yato called, to save him from the woman's unwelcome embraces, and also to strike a cooler pose than his normal 'loitering drifter' one. "Well, my faithful, what would you ask of your god?" he tried not to stutter as he said the words that came off the top of his head in a spurt of trying to imitate the pompous speeches of the other deities.
"We just wanted a sign that you existed!" The man said, shrugging.
"err… did I manage that?" his tension slacking in confusion and Yukine held loosely beside his hips. He really was not used to this much attention. "what are your names? It's kind of… unheard of for people I've not met to know about me…"
"Karisawa Erika." The harassment girl piped up cheerfully, sitting back from where she had fallen when Yukine vanished from under her.
"Yumasaki Walker." The man said, digging in his pockets he started rambling "we do have offerings we'd like to make. We thought that wasting your time needed more though, so If we're allowed to ask something of you then please come with us so we can make more substantial food offerings"
"Yuki." Yato called the boy back, so that the kid was peeking over his shoulder. He caught the coins tossed in his direction and lightning fast put them in his bottle-o-savings. "I don't think there's any way I can refuse now that I've accepted payment…"
"Greaaaaaaaat" moaned Yukine, his face red.
There was great awkwardness as the other two men were made aware of their existence, the deity and regalia were seated snugly between Erika and Walker, in the van, and drove to a restaurant.
"So, you still haven't explained how you heard about me." Yato said between mouthfuls of food.
Erika pulled a bag, seemingly out of nowhere, and put it on the table with a great thud, and sloshing of drinks. "We read about you of course!" She handed him manga from the mysterious bag… manga that talked about him… Noragami.
"We don't know how closely it follows your life. We're still at the part where you want to become a god of fortune."
"That's a rather long phase…" Yato said vaguely, staring at the embarrassments, and victories recorded in the pages with a kind of terror.
"Well, we were thinking… If you existed,"
"which obviously you do,"
"you might need some sort of focus for becoming a god of fortune."
"Most of the ways you're trying up to the present issue are playing to your strength as a war god"
"But that role is already taken"
"But you are good at severing connections."
"So why not do for people what you did for us."
"And become a deity of belief"
"What?" the god said.
"Like, a deity that specializes in divine protection on a personal level."
"And who comes to people who are afraid of losing the good things that come from belief, when their faith is flagging"
"Because that connection is delicate as anything, and you seem to understand that more than anyone else."
"Did you summon me to give me advice?"
"YES" Both of the excitable Yatoites said.
No ownership implied
The amount of occult theory in Noragami is kind of staggering. I mean the whole concept of a deity created from the wish of a powerful human is right in line with how Daemons are supposed to work in our world. What I mean to say is, If Yato didn't exist before the manga, then he probably does now. A Daemon created by the continued thoughts of Fangirls... this couldn't possibly go wrong...