((Okay so I accidentally doubled a chapter where there should have been something else right after the council meeting started, so go to the new chapter right after the council meeting. It's important.))
"Akira where'd you go, it's time for dinner!" Liz called, walking around the first floor. "Patty," she sighed, "help me and go to look for him please."
"Okiedokie!" She skipped away giggling. "There's no hide-and-go-seek when it's dinner you silly goose!" She called down the hall, and Liz chuckled.
After about five minutes the two of them found Akira hanging upside down off of the second floor balcony of the stairs with their legs wrapped around the posts of the railing.
"Akira?" Liz asked. They were staring blankly into the window with their arms crossed. "Akira!" she said sharply.
Patty went over to them, reached her hand up, and stuck her finger into their ear. Akira noticed them then, jerking to the side and looking at the sisters like they just showed up out of thin air.
"What."
"It's dinner time." Liz said crossly.
"Okay?"
"We've been looking for you for seven minutes and you didn't even notice? What the hell are you even doing?" She practically yelled, gesturing up and down.
"Sorry I just kinda… Blanked out." Akira muttered, putting their hands up and dropping down onto the floor into a roll and then standing up.
"Do you do this often?" Liz asked as they walked back into the kitchen.
"Kind of."
"Why?" Patty asked curiously.
"I don't know, I just do. It's not that important." they say in a defensive tone of voice, and the sisters decide to drop the subject.
"So you got to see your mom today." Said Liz, spooning out a section of lasagna from the night before.
"Yeah!" Patty exclaimed, "she's so pretty!" Akira smiled.
"She's going to be around for a while, but I'm pretty sure she'll be visiting with my Father most in between meetings since they haven't seen one another in so long."
Liz snorted and put her fork down. Akira's face turned a surprising shade of charcoal.
"I don't even know how that would work," Akira whispered loudly to their plate after a few slightly awkward moments of silence, "He's practically a tent."
Liz burst out into full blown laughter, and Patty and Akira both giggled.
"You've gotta give him some credit," Liz said between gasps, "he at least has a face!"
"Sometimes he even goes all out and adds arms!" Akira added.
The lasagna was cooled enough to eat by the time the three of them had stopped laughing.
"It's a nice evening." Your shadow comments, the two of you sitting on the steeply slanted roof of one of the DWMA's towers.
"The colors of the sunset look like different shades." You remark, shifting your foot to stop it from falling asleep.
"Memoria is going to find you, you know, especially now that Death knows your here."
"To be honest I am surprised he didn't find me my first day, hour even. I'm in his soul after all, and he should be able to tell when there's a powerful non-human soul within the barrier of his own. Maybe he's still too used to feeling Asura."
"Well he'd better start noticing other entities quick or else something bad may happen." Umbra frowned.
"What, like all the other bad things that happened over the past four years involving this place?" you ask, referring to the three Gorgon sisters, the outbreak of your half-brother, and his madness. Umbra chuckles.
"You know those are just fuel."
"Yeah, fuel and distractions. Why do you think I'm here? He has kids, fucking children for goodness sake, going around vanquishing souls that have evil concentrate while none of them notice the practical ocean of evil concentrate under all of us. He's a fool. It's strongest here because he puts the kishin eggs in the ground of the Death Room but they just leach new evil back into the system like a human landfill into water."
"You know all of this and yet you don't listen to me, or, rather, yourself, considering that I harbor a section of your own soul, and just tell the adults who know what to do with it?"
"They've never dealt with something like this before. Besides, if it takes a hybrid to notice it in the first place I'm probably going to have to be the one to get rid of it. Anyway if my theory is correct, and this thing is what made Erek paranoid enough of my mother's power to kill my three half-sisters then who's to say it won't try to stop me by diverting their attention that way again? I mean, how else can you explain what's up with Abaddon?"
"I still think that it may be a wise decision to at least make your mother aware of your suspicions." your shadow sighs.
"I understand, but if I tell her then she will take control and I don't think she'd let me do anything out of fear that I would get hurt. I'm younger than the others had been still, and even they couldn't protect themselves well enough. She'd have every logical and motherly right to do that no matter what I said." You chuckle, knees to your chest and chin in the crooks of your arms.
"But as a Queen and commander of an army she would have to objectively consider you as likely to be her most powerful weapon, which is a path she is also probable to take."
"Yes, but how far into the game will we have to be losing for her to truly take on that mind set?"
"Quite far I believe."
"Quite far indeed."