>>5924075You had the eyes of someone who wanted to know what he was looking at. Contemplative, obsessive eyes that wanted to be omniscient, inward and outward. Eyes that were blind to all matter because they looked upon nothing, no matter in this material world, only spirit. A god’s eyes, the eyes of a spirit, the eyes of a dead boy.
Or maybe just the eyes of a stupid, pretentious teenager, you think. Otomo smiles back at you as if you’ve shared a subtle joke. It’s okay to not be omniscient, sometimes it’s okay to just look at what was in front of you, to become part of the spirit of a moment rather than watch upon it, like an outsider or a ghost.
You look at this boy and hardly know who he is. He clearly has two natures, Otomo the Self and Otomo the Other. What’s the color of this soul here? You look beyond Otomo and see, behind him like a blue halo in the bathroom mirror, the blue light of the white wall, the blue light spread forth by the white bulb, and the blue light of a blue soul, the blur of Otomo’s body, a figure standing before this, out of focus, blue light in his eyes the same color as his illuminated blue shadow, the form, a distorted image, forgotten and irrelevant as both of you project your thought outwards at the other and reflecting it back in a recursive loop of knowledge and desire.
If you couldn’t have love for anyone else, at least you could feel love for Otomo.
You’ll go see what Masami was doing.
—
Soon, your strategy for reacting to contact begins to settle. Naoki leaps to run interference immediately, but maintains a defensive attitude, holding his ground and moving to protect the two of you until he’s sure the time is pregnant for a move.
Masami leaps into a nearby defensive position that will allow her to leave Naoki to himself to distract the obvious danger while she keeps an eye on both of you and your rear for signs that she needs to intervene.
And you, go to a defensive position similarly close to but adjacent to Masami, with similar but more focused intent.
Naoki holds the line and tanks, Masami gets into cover and looks for large weaknesses to cover with backup, and you take in the situation as a whole to develop a strategy, whipping up a sensing water sphere and feeling its information, scanning the battlefield for targets more astutely taken out with a quick water bullet.
Three directions of mutual support.
It’s a defensive triangle of a strategy. A reactive, defensive tactic that gives you breathing room to respond to the threat after withstanding and deliberately assessing it. In that manner, Hotaru officially tells you that you're the team leader because you’re the one who forms the clearest picture of the situation and it's your voice the others need to listen for.
At first that’s intimidating. But eventually you think about what your soul is supposed to do and that intimidation goes away.
>You gain .5 intelligence>Naoki gains .5 taijutsu>Masami gains .5 intelligence 