Examining the book with his eyes, Jaxson Rixen leans forward, clasping his hands to rest on his knees.

The target of his attention is the girl that sits across from him, her own blue-grey eyes trapped by the words on the page.

After Jaxson clears his throat, she snaps a metal bookmark that clips the page tightly into the top of it.

"Sorry," she apologizes, closing the book and revealing the deep melancholy of the blue on the front cover.

Jaxson's face scrunches up. "May I talk to you?"

"Go ahead," she rakes a hand through her hair, frowning as she combs one side to the other.

"It's about my death."

"Oh. That."

Her face hardens, much how you know how it's going to rain when the dark clouds start to roll in.

Rio takes her characters quite seriously- despite how joking she was about them on the outside, they were an extent of her heart, so she took both pride and insecurity with them.

"What about it?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact one of my crew members, Shinji, he-"

She flies forward, clamping one hand across his mouth.

"Don't spoil it!"

"There's no one listening."

Her face screws up in a scowl, something Rio didn't do much. "You never know who bugs room. Ears are everywhere. The boundary between alternate realities and this one is unbelievably weak. Anyone can listen in if they have the mindset to do so."

"Some people can piece it together based off the clues you give."

"That's the point. Anyways, the topic at hand. What is it?"

Jaxson's hand goes to touch his ear, where a small earring dangles. "Ashita. My family. Shinzo, Kin..."

"Once again," she flicks a hand at the room around her. "Alternate realities are weak here. You could easily slip into one. I'm usually fine with it if you don't screw things over. I let Shikimo escape into a Fairy Tail one- I even followed her into it with a couple others." 

"No, not in another universe," Jaxson says, shaking his head. "Here, where everything is the same, the world I still love. Rio..."

She puffs out her cheeks. "I'm a sap for ships, but..."

Standing abruptly, Jaxson's brittle pieces of glass, his eyes, bear into her. "I see. Thank you for this time."

He turns to leave, but Rio shoots up too, wrenching his shoulder towards her, but her next move is gentle.

Bringing her fingertips to his cheek, Rio smiles. "Another time, Jaxson. Another time, I promise. I'm just a little down and under stormy clouds at the moment."

Her touch is cold, but there was warmth at the tips of her fingertips.

Jaxson blinks, then pulls his hand up to rest over hers. "Best of luck for you, my author. I will wait."

With that, the character turns, leaving Rio in her own weak mind.

After minutes of walking, Jaxson tenses, feeling the presence of someone rest on his shoulders.

"You... You're rather sloppy."

"Perhaps that's my intention," the voice calls, a male one much like his own. "The boundary your author has caused is quite... Unstable. I can only assume that her mind is unstable as well, at the moment."

Jaxson frowns. Your author... So it wasn't one of Rio's characters. He usually guesses Maddox, since we came often, but the pacing and wording is more like his rather then the Faithlin's.

He stiffens, feeling a sharp edge prod his spine.

"Well, I was bound to find you anyway, counterpart of mine."

"Sue," the word flew from his mouth. "Mary Sue. No... Gary Stu."

Jaxson turns slowly, and there he is, face cracked out into a smile.

The Sue version of Jaxson.

"Do you need anything from me?"

His counterpart frowns, a soft crinkle to his gleaming eyes and flawless face. "Oh, don't be so rude," he says, the words punctuated with a clipped tone.

"I have all the right too," he replies, cocking his head. "What do you want? I won't ask again."

"You want to go back in your world, yes?"

"... I can wait."

"But you can go now if you do a favor for me!"

Shaking his head, Jaxson's hands curl into fists. "No."

"But-"

"Leave."

The blade snaps out without another word, the tip of it resting against the sue's throat.

"My. Since we've never met before, I underestimated your reflexes. But," something cold is at Jaxson's throat too. "Even the feather-light touch can kill us."

He was careful to glance down rather slowly, the gleaming tip of the identical blade at the sue's throat at his.

"I put it there when you did to me," the Gary Stu smiles, the expression catlike in many ways.

"I said leave."

"So you did," he hums. "Don't get on my bad side, lesser me. That is just asking for disaster. And I'll give you a taste of it if you don't remove your sword from my throat."

Kurokei, the name along the side of the katana, gleams as Jaxson slowly turns it, the grooves catching light, but he doesn't retract it.

"You could dodge it," he says, it being a statement.

"I could," the counterpart says in response, and as he speaks, Jaxson shoves his hand forward- at the same time, the sue slashes as well, jumping back so that the tip of Kurokei doesn't graze him in the slightest.

Instead, Jaxson coughs, feeling the pain as he swallowed. Fingers straying to his throat, he feels the warm liquid that had started to secrete from the cut.

"Jaxson," the Gary Stu sighs. "Now I'm gonna have to show you what disasters I'm going to cause. The first one shouldn't... It shouldn't bother you too much."

With a tingling laugh, he disappears.

The ground rushes up to meet Jaxson's crumbling body.

When he wakes, everything is cold.

Wearing a loose tanktop, he shivers, rubbing his hands up his forearms and biceps. There is no warmth seeping from his body's surface area.

Jaxson allows his gaze to roam side to side, moving from his curled position to sit up, noticing how he was now barefoot and without a weapon.

It's as if...the world has darkened.

Jaxson had felt this before.

The Rixen pulled himself up to his feet, rubbing at his arm again.

The expansive area before him is a yard of glittering black, sparkles of white and blue twinkling as if it was the night sky itself.

He frowns, eyes searching for anything besides that, and came up with nothing.

With a small curse, he moves forward, head cocked and ears attentive.

There.

A tinkle. The tinkle... Of a bell?

Snapping his head in the direction of the noise, Jaxson sets his eyes on the view, still waiting.

The tinkle again, but this time in the other direction.

Someone laughs.

"My, aren't you familiar?" It tsks.

Every muscle in his body stiffens, and Jaxson only has the fraction of a second to throw up his hand, racing pain flashing through his palm as the gleam of silver smoothly flickered by, coated in a dull wash of red.

"You're at least not a bore," the voice says, the silver-haired man being able to put name to voice more by the second. "I expected you to have slower reflexes, am I right?"

The drawl makes Jaxson tense, confident in his answer but still doubting the idea of it.

"... Shinji?"

A pause.

Then the click of false clapping.

"Very good, Jaxson," he praises, a noise coming from where he was, hugged by shadows.

Jaxson's eyes dart towards the noise, and Shinji makes his appearance know, stepping out.

The Shinji Jaxson knows... Would blend in well here. The one he knows had hair to his shoulders, a mess of black, and has earrings on both ears. He speaks in a low, even voice, spacing out his words and a pause between each one.

The one before him has hair pulled back in a ponytail, several strands falling loose onto his shoulders, a smirk on his lips and ears bare of piercings.

Immediately, besides the basic appearance, Jaxson can notice other things. Other things like the way he holds himself, different to the other Shinji. How his hands move when he speaks.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I'm so different," Shinji hums.

"Not necessarily."

"Oh?"

His grip tightens from where it had  a clump of his shirt. Eyes narrow at Shinji for the fraction of a minute.

"You're not him- not the one I know."

"Funny you say that," Shinji cocks his head.

"You wouldn't imposter Shinji while having no piercings and your hair pulled back."

"So who am I?"

At this, the swordsman fell silent.

"You're still Shinji."

"Excellent," he beams. "You understand."

"... I'm in..."

"An alternate reality."