(Untitled)

[prideofwisdom]

Who: Stein and Asura
When: Late Wednesday night
Where: Some non-descript back alley somewhere
Summary: Asura's fearlessness-driven rampaging starts with making poor Stein lose his damn mind.
Rating: idk man, like. PG-13? Maybe R?
Warnings: More nightmare fuel than your body has room for.

Comments

[strongestcoward]

Sadly for Stein, it was only going to get worse from here. Asura had become somewhat interested in Stein-he was from His world, and from the impression he had gathered, quite ready to hang glide from the cliff of madness.

Why not have some fun with that.

Stein's choice to hang around in alleys helped Asura no end; whilst normally he would have skulked around until Stein was gone over the edge before approaching, this time he landed with a heavy thud in the mouth of the alley, leaning with one arm on the wall.
"Yo, Stein-Sensei! Don't you know that if you hang around in places like this late at night..."
Asura burst into a huge grin, tendrils of darkness spreading from his shadow.
"You might meet some scary people?"

[prideofwisdom]

Like an approaching natural disaster, Asura's presence made the animals flee in any direction they could. Stein envied them; he couldn't exactly climb up a sheer brick wall, and certainly not fast enough to use it as an escape route. The fire escape attached to the building next to them might work better. He had a momentary flash of himself clinging to the ladder for dear life as those tendrils latched on and pulled him back down to earth, to Asura, waiting eagerly to devour him whole...

Stein clamped his eyes shut, murmuring a soft "Not real, not real..." to himself. The last thing he needed was to let himself get scared into defenselessness. If he managed to keep his head on straight, which certainly wasn't getting any easier, he had a chance of getting out of this intact.

With a shrug, he picked himself off the wall, resisting the instinct to back up as far as he could. "I don't know, I think I'm generally classified as one of those scary people. There can't be too many people worse than me hanging around in dark alleys."

[strongestcoward]

"Maybe not too many..." The Kishin began, taking a single step into the alley with a soft clicking noise of his boots on the ground. His shirts remained hanging open, showing the incredibly tiny amount of muscle that hung onto his bones.

"But don't you think that one is enough?" The question almost seemed genuine instead of a veiled threat or maybe even an insult to Stein's intelligence. Who really knew which it was?

The scarves that trailed behind Asura flexed, counter to the wind, like a tail of an animal waiting in anticipation. The madness was seeping from him, low and subtle but constant and most importantly, there.

[prideofwisdom]

He could feel the insanity, like the first few drops of rain before a hurricane hits. Stein clutched onto the sleeve of his lab coat, tightly, but trying to make it seem natural. He needed to get the hell out of here.

Stein chuckled slightly under his breath, biting down on the inside of his lip when that chuckle threatened to grow into a manic laugh. "I think that would depend on who that one was." He smirked lazily, taking one long stride forward. "Maybe if that crazy clown who keeps robbing banks cornered me, I'd be a little nervous, I think." As much as he hated the idea of getting closer to Asura, he stood more of a chance of finding some kind of opening now than he would in a few minutes.

[strongestcoward]

"If it's clowns you're worrying about, then you're still out of luck." Asura's scarves flowed through the air, trailing across the bricks to either side of him, cutting off any exit that way.
"I suppose you could say I'm the ring master in the circus everyone attends," he mused, the madness picking up, the shadows growing eyes, watching and watching and always unblinkingly watching.

[prideofwisdom]

The scarves startled him enough to make him flinch slightly. There went that plan. He couldn't justify getting any closer to the Kishin - obviously, that was not his ticket out of here - but if Stein started backing up, he'd just get cornered. More cornered than he already was, at any rate.

He glanced around nervously, half trying to come up with a new way to get out of here and half taking note of how many sets of eyes were watching him. A mad little giggle escaped before he managed to rein himself back in. "Don't you have anyone else you can bother?"

[strongestcoward]

Asura's high pitch cackle escaped his lips, a short barrage of simple 'ke' sounds. "Of course, I could go and bother someone else, but I'm not going to. You're a curious kind of guy aren't you?"

His grin grew massive, his fingers twitching. This was the fun part.
"So why don't you try looking at things from a new point of view!?" He his last words in excitement, his madness punching higher-the darkness flexed, the shadows becoming mouths that swallowed Stein up in one go, plunging him into thick, wet darkness, as if falling into a warm ocean.

[prideofwisdom]

Stein screamed, a momentary, clipped-off little noise, before a series of giggles replaced it. The madness was almost a reprieve at this point; it was so welcoming, so natural for him to just accept it and get it over with, that was the hard part.

He didn't even notice how hard he must have started laughing until the wire frames of his glasses obscured his view slightly. After staring at them like he didn't quite know what they were used for, he tucked them away in a pocket. Stein took a step forward, the shadows moving along with him, protecting him from sanity's influence.

He felt invincible. If he had still felt the need to attack Asura, he actually felt like he had the ability to win now. It's not like he had much of anything left to fear at this point.

[strongestcoward]

"How're you feeling..." Asura began, all three eyes staring at the good Doctor, each one picking a separate direction to roll around in.

"Stein-Sensei?"

[prideofwisdom]

Stein mumbled to himself, trying to decide how he was feeling. It was hard to describe, doubly so when he wasn't all there mentally. He was somehow both jittery and lethargic, but couldn't think of the words.

"Better, much better. I think," he said at last, trying to keep his own eyes focused on Asura.