JUNE 17th, 2014.

Ugh… where… am I…?
Seth’s eyes slowly began to open as he slowly raised his head, which was restrained by the neck from the front passenger side seatbelt and pressed against the right window, as he restrictively searched around the sedan’s interior with blurred vision.

“Hey. He’s awake,” Kat says to Yasu, though Seth doesn’t fully understand it due to his grogginess.

“Finally. Your snoring got old quickly.” Yasu retorts, glancing at him through the rearview mirror, angled to the right to keep his head in view. Yasu’s eyes usually appeared as cold and unfeeling, but a sliver of relief showed through them.

“Where am I…?” Seth realizes that the question he posed earlier was only an internal one, so he asks it again.

“In a car,” Yasu quips with a subtly smug grin.

Seth blinks to himself a few times, processing his response.

Smartass.

Kat places out her left hand over her shoulder, giving an uncaring wave to Seth. She’s looking forward out of the windshield, not bothering to turn around as she speaks.

“We’re bringing you to our boss. If you’ve got any complaints…”

“...You’re not exactly in a position to hand ‘em out.” Yasu finishes her sentence as she glares over at him, visibly annoyed.

“...Are you with those free world freaks?” Seth asks, with his right temple still pressed against the glass of the right window. Not exactly a comfortable position to be in.

“‘Free world freaks’...?” Kat begins to ask. “You mean… Seraphim?”

“Who…?”

Yasu sighs, focusing on the traffic ahead and gripping the steering wheel tighter.

“Feline. I doubt he knows.”

“Dammit, stop calling me that!”

She twists her torso around to look at Seth, glaring at him with an annoyed expression.

“Cut the crap. You’re with them, right? Aren’t you the one who started a fight with that Archangel?”

“That wasn’t me,” Seth replies, trying to avoid her intense staring. “I was attacked by him, then he killed a…”

Flashes of the boy’s mother’s death burn Seth’s mind, as her late screams echo in his ears.

“...Civilian.”

Kat raises an eyebrow at him, not buying it. She reaches her arm over to her left and pulls on the front passenger’s side seatbelt as it constricts around Seth’s neck.

“So you’re saying you synchronized over some rando dying? Somehow I doubt it.”

Seth’s wrists push against the other two seatbelts they’re restrained by, but they don’t budge. Realizing he’ll pass out if she keeps pulling on it, he coughs out a reply.

“Ugh…! I don’t know… what that is…!”

Kat releases her grip on the seat belt, leaning further forward to emphasize her skepticism with her body language.

“Ah…? Really, now…?”

Seth stops looking away, staring her directly in the eyes with a look that says, ‘Yes, really!’ as she realizes he isn’t lying to her. Albeit not a satisfying answer either, she fully sits back in her seat, sighing as he looks down at the floor.

“So, the spirit world’s just gone crazy if they’re letting newbie signers like you have that kind of power… what a mess…”

Yasu scoffs as he turns down the street to the right. Seth hadn’t noticed before, but they’re currently in a denser, more populated part of the Outer Layer.

How long was I out for…? He thinks to himself, staring out the window.

“What’s your name, new kid?” Yasu interrupts his viewing of the crowds on the sidewalk as the rain droplets slide down the window behind them. As one does, Seth was watching as they combined and tried to figure out which droplets would meet before the others. That is to say, he’s incredibly out of it and confused.

“...Seth,” he responds, still looking at the window. Yasu, understandably, is slightly annoyed by his lack of attention.

“Alright, ‘Seth’...” Yasu glares at him, expecting an answer with calm but deadly aggression, “...who’s your contracted spirit?”

“He said his name was Yggdrasil.”

Yasu stops glaring at Seth, shifting his emotionless expression forward as a car in front of him slows down just before a red light. Easing his foot on the brake, he grips the steering wheel tightly, as if he wanted to crush it. Kat noticed it out of the corner of his eyes, and came to a conclusion:

Yasu knew— or had at least heard of— that name before.

And it scared him.

“If you aren’t the ones after me…” Seth begins to say, glancing at the two of them as best he can, “...then who are you, exactly?”

Kat scoffs.

“That’s none of your business—”

“‘Those Who Resist’.” Yasu cuts her off, glancing back at Seth, never letting him escape his peripherals. “An organization that regulates signers and spirits. A mediary between this world and the other.”

Kat side-eyes him, giving him a death stare. Seth, on the other hand, turns his head a little to the left to finally get it vertically upright as the belt lightly loosens around his neck.

“...I know I’m a signer, at least. So what do you want with me?”

“Looks like you’ve got an idea already, so I’ll cut to the important part.” Yasu loosens his grip on the steering wheel, with a mark being left due to the pressure he put on it. “Signers are classified by the abilities and capacity of damage their contracted spirits are capable of. There’s seven main classes, and you, kid…”

Yasu stares glares dead into his eyes, effortlessly threatening him with only his demeanor.

“...You’re in the top rungs. Meaning you’re more of a weapon than you are a man.”

Seth’s eyes opened widely, slowly. His memory of the events after his transformation was murky, at best… but he knew that Yasu was telling the truth. Without feeling sympathy for Seth’s delayed reaction to the news, he continued, as emotionally as he had begun.

“Every signer’s gonna want you. Our job is to say, ‘screw the arms’ race’, and take you before anybody else... I’ll just say it: you aren’t human anymore. That being the case, you don’t have human rights, either.”

Kat glances over at Yasu, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the brutal tone he’s taking on. While she was initially very worried and uncomfortable with the idea of taking Seth, she soon realized after talking to him that he was more or less a victim of unfortunate circumstances.

‘Signers shouldn’t know sympathy’, huh… She thought to herself, not sure what to believe.

Yasu continued his warning, ignoring the reactions from both of them.

“You’ve only got two routes, and one might not even be open,” he says to Seth. “Either you’ll be executed, or you’ll be forced to work with us. At first glance, you look damned pathetic, but that thing inside you is another story entirely.”

Death or a stable job… I get kicked out of my apartment tomorrow anyway, so if it’s this or being homeless…

“Alright,” Seth begins to say as he uncomfortably shrugs his shoulders, “I’ll do what your boss wants.”

Yasu lifts his right eyebrow, glaring at Seth again through the rearview mirror.

“You got some screws loose, kid? Maybe you don’t get it. You’d be selling your soul—”

“I don’t have much of one anymore,” Seth retorts, interrupting him, “and it’s probably better than dying on the street... ending up as biofuel.”

“And besides…” he continues, “if I’m being hunted by ‘Seraphim’ and whoever else, chances are I’d die pretty quickly if I went off on my own.”

Yasu reaches his hand up to the rearview mirror, turning to the left where Seth is no longer in view and it directly looks at the back windshield.

“Pretty sharp for a rookie,” he says, but despite it sounding like a compliment, his face shows zero emotion as the words leave his lips. “But don’t get your hopes up. Making you one of us isn’t a guarantee. The world would be better off if you didn’t exist.”

“Hey,” Kat interrupts him while placing her hand out and tapping against his right shoulder, “that’s enough for now.”

“Growing a soft spot for the victim, feline?” he retorts, glaring at her without turning his head away from the road.

“No, just… Liam sent on this goose chase, do you really think he’d kill him after that?”

“Liam’s fickle. He’ll want to kill you and love you on two different days, one after the other… and he doesn’t know Seth here has synchronized before. That changes things.”

“...You keep bringing that up,” Seth pipes in, asking a question, “but what is it?”

Yasu grunts and glances at Kat. She sighs and moves her hand to the side with a twirling motion.

She does that a lot… Seth thinks to himself.

“Basically,” Kat begins to say, “synchronizing is when a signer and their spirit’s desires and wants resonate. It makes them stronger, and gives them access to abilities they usually aren’t able to have.”

She points out her index finger toward the roof of the car.

“For someone with a higher class contract like you, your synchronization is stupidly strong, so it takes on its own form.”

She points out her middle finger alongside her index finger, once again toward the roof of the car.

“The trade-off is that higher class spirits are almost always more cunning and deliberate than lower classes, meaning there’s unsaid costs to synchronizing with them.”

Unsaid costs…? Is that what Yggdrasil was referring to when he said I’d lose my humanity if I kept dying?

I could ask, but… the more they know, the more they might want to execute me.

“...What type of unsaid costs?” Seth meekly asks.

Kat points out her ring finger next to the other two, leaning her hand to the left and more toward Yasu. He ignores it.

“The sub-terms of your contract. They’re not always said out loud, and some spirits will even lie to their signers to coax them into a contract that ends up killing them.”

Yasu speaks up.

“The more infamous your spirit is, the weightier the cost of contracting them. Spirits aren’t your friends, and in your case…? Gods exist to watch humans suffer. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Yggdrasil did sound like he was enjoying himself… maybe he’s right.

“Get ready,” Yasu warns, interrupting Seth’s thoughts. “We’re here.”