And My DARK Attribute
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Tasuketsu -Fate of the Majority-.
Pairings: One-sided Gobo x Nishime. Referenced (canon) Omi x Rika.
Summary:
"Don't underestimate adolescence! It's the real world, for real!"
"Don't underestimate adolescence! It's the real world, for real!"
"Gobo…Go outside. Hurry up, you're scaring the customers!"
"That's me! I'm a customer! For real!"
"Shoo! Before my boss notices!"
"Is she hot?"
"How is that relevant? HOW?"
"It's like I always say: The world would be a much brighter place if more women were willing to look revealing!"
He didn't always say that. Not according to Shuji. "For real" was Gobo's favourite phrase.
Shuji was having a hard time unpacking the statement. Was it Gobo's (or more accurately, his invented persona's) gross attempt to aura farm, teenage insensitivity toward the opposite sex, or both? Either way, it didn't square with why Gobo was here.
He was here to buy groceries, but what he was really, really here for was –
"Shoo."
"Shoo? What am I to you, a crow? You can't just chase me away, Nishime! For real!"
"Why'd you have to show up and hassle me at work?" Shuji waved with a nervous smile to the other Koutei Mart shoppers, in hopes they'd ignore Gobo and move along.
"History. And my DARK Attribute."
"In case you forgot, Saneatsu changed history. We got the good video game ending, Gobo! Everyone has it great besides the real bad guys, who are in prison. Which is where I'm gonna be if you don't leave! So please. Take your slices of roast ham and scram!"
What 100% hadn't transpired between him and Gobo was less compelling than intimations to the contrary. As Saneatsu's action had proven, reality was malleable. The truth, regardless of Shinozaki's sentimentality and choice to keep his prosthetic eye, took a back seat.
Shuji rather not be escorted from his job to a patrol car in the parking lot over false appearances.
Well…They were false appearances for Shuji. Gobo was still trying to live in an imagined reality where he and Shuji were together.
Their conversation was overt, though the gist of their words was lost as though the tornadoes Seraphiel produced with his Meteorology Right were raging. Whispers too hissy or howling to hear.
Shuji appreciated the thunderous interference. Arguing with a customer might earn him a scolding from his employer, but he was resigned to that if the point of their argument never came to light.
Perhaps this time – finally – Gobo would understand.
But that was being optimistic. Gobo's whininess usually won the day.
"Then what? Take this ham back to my parents, and crawl into my lair until dinner?"
"To study like a normal person? Yes. You should do that, Gobo."
Shuji was ready to throw a "Go to your room" in there, only that would've reinforced the dubiety at the center of his predicament, and made things worse.
"Don't 'normal person' me! I'm a second-year in Class 2 of the Engineering Department at Itabashi Chuo Junior High School! And a Level 7 Demon-Type, for real!"
"Yes, yes, O Emperor of the Darkness. But I don't know, could you…return to the Deck?"
Gobo dragged his teeth. Forcefully. Raised his upper lip so Shuji saw his gums. Unpleasantly. His frustration with Shuji may have come with its own unique sound effect.
He expected this sort of scathing sarcasm out of Eren, but not Nishime!
Gobo grabbed his own ankles and sat down in the store.
"G-Gobo! Come on, you can't sit there!"
"Omi's parents are so real for letting him see Rika!"
"Omi is fifteen! Rika's seventeen!"
They were near the borderline, but nowhere near the degree of eating expired canned food awful that Shuji's twenty-one and Gobo's thirteen was.
"I ain't moving, Nishime!"
…
He moved.
After an extended impasse, Shuji managed to narrowly – narrowly – convince Gobo to go home, his sanity and freedom intact.
Kids are afraid of getting in trouble with adults.
"What? A security guard? Wha-what do I do, for real?"
That Gobo didn't treat Shuji with the same deference…He didn't view Shuji an adult.
That was the problem for Shuji.
Gobo sat on his bed in the same pose he sat in the store, continually clicking the remote control for the air conditioner before slamming the control and himself face-first onto the mattress.
Below the poster for a death metal band he listened to, whose band name literally included "Death" (and whose logo was an unsubtle hexagram), he promised revenge.
"Nishime, you jerk…You have no idea what you've unleashed! The darkness inside me won't rest! Yes…As my hatred reaches new heights, my power grows stronger! I've unlocked my true potential! Every time you've looked down on me has only added to the despair you'll experience during your inevitable doom! When I'm through with you, they'll wheel you out of surgery covered in bandages! Where I'll be, waiting to send you there again! For real, you're –!"
Natural light flooded the room, and Gobo hissed and fled the sun let in by the pulled blinds.
"Honestly! How can you see a thing in the dark?"
Gobo was wheezing, imitating a dying mammal on its last breath. An overdramatization. He'd been out of the house and in the sun not two hours prior.
"Are you finished?" His mom knew exactly how to handle her son's games.
"Now I am."
"Good. Because you left the juice I asked you for at the store."
"Oh. But I bought it! For real!"
"The sales associate was nice enough to deliver the bag you left behind to our door. In the future, please be more careful."
Nishime did?
She left him to prepare dinner, and his phone rang. Shuji was calling.
"NISHIME~! You came over without telling me?"
"Don't get too excited. I had a delivery to make, and you happened to be on my route."
"And for real, you were so real for that!"
"Gobo, hear me out."
"Yah, yah! I know the drill! You're my sidekick. Not my –"
"I'm not your sidekick."
"Kekeke! Then you're my –!"
"I'm not that either."
"Then what are you?"
"Ahead of you in the Monster Strike rankings."
"WHAT? SINCE WHEN?" Gobo quickly opened the app. "I'm not losing to you, Nishime! For real!"