"No one laughs at the Goddess when they're staring down the end of a sword," he told her once. "But even fools will pray if they look up and see a SOLDIER is wielding it."
She didn't say anything back, watching him watch her as his words crashed around in her head. They hung in the air with an unusual gravity, pressing down around them with the tension of a storm - when least expected from him, as usual. For once he looked serious; there was no smirk curling the corner of his mouth, no mischievous sparkle in his bright eyes, steady as the sky as they looked at her through crimson strands of hair, diverted from the book open in his large hands which had captivated them in such fascinated rapture an instant ago.
Genesis was never grave, laughing when staring down the end of every sword- though probably not for the same reasons. Why do you laugh, then? she wanted to ask him, but perhaps she already knew the answer, and she was too distracted to even form the words.
"You make us sound like…monsters," she finally said, and she couldn't help the soft, almost sad tone in her voice. The dark power he spoke of was something she wasn't sure she wanted.
"Not monsters," he replied, lowering the book. "People will tremble before a Bahamut summoned from the skies, and rightly so. Does that make the Bahamut evil, because it is feared?" His musical, accented voice flowed like water in her ears. His eyes met hers, holding some deeper inner understanding "We are what we are." He finished simply. "And we are the best. Those that know it are right to pray."
There was a smooth, silent shift of movement behind her, like a shadow dancing across the floor. "Basically, we have a good reputation," the deep, amused baritone implied. A powerful voice. His voice.
Genesis rolled his eyes, unperturbed, and the moment was broken- at least on him. "As always, your words bring Enlightenment upon the world, great hero," Genesis drawled, gaze slipping back to the pages before him with a slightly aggravated tightness around the corners of his eyes.
Akira turned slowly to face him, a dark specter edged with blazing highlights of silver. He was watching her with alien eyes, looking for what, she couldn't tell. But despite his dry teasing, she had the sense that he agreed with what had just been said. Every single word.
"Do you believe that?" she asked quietly, wanting to hear him say it. To drag it out past that ethereal mask of ice and finely chiseled features he wore as a face.
He raised his sword, lifting his other arm to balance the weight, and she tensed as the simulation began to brighten and sharpen around them once more, a fake world of something beautiful she would likely never get to see. But perhaps this time, she was a little better than the perfect illusion.
"Your own power is nothing to be afraid of," he told her, and there was a kind of wisdom in his voice, whether his words were true or not. "I have yet to hear a prayer, but no one has ever laughed at me."
I bet they don't, she thought, right as Masamune descended and split the false sky in two.
She wasn't laughing, at all.