2025-09-16: Here's DJ Para-Mind Spinnin' Your Mad Beats
- Cutscene: Here's DJ Para-Mind Spinnin' Your Mad Beats
- Cast: Yua Ooshiro, Para-Mind
- Where: A Car Trip Around Aoba
- OOC Date: 2025-09-16
- IC Date: Thursday, July 12 2012
- Summary: Para-Mind visits Yua to drop off some Skill Cartridges... and some not-so-friendly advice. Everything is a joke, to him, but he's not necessarily their enemy either.
Trouble always drops with the bass.
Yua's just walking over to the greengrocer across from her studio -- she shouldn't need an escort for this. But a loud red car pulls up by the curb, a door opens --
"Yo, babe! Check your messages, it's 2012."
-- and Yua heaves a great sigh.
The scruffy-maned man sitting in the back is someone she knows only as Para-Mind, and his orange hair isn't even the loudest thing about him. He wears massive headphones around his neck, and a shit-eating grin. Tragically, the club music pounding from the car's speakers is not constrained to his headset.
"I was occupied with my tutoring, sir," she tells him, already weary. "I..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, s'why I figured you'd be here," Para-Mind grins. "C'mere, get in, I got somethin' for ya."
He's the epitome of stranger danger, but unfortunately, he isn't a stranger, so Yua gets into the seat he was leaning across. The door closes, the car drives off --
"Please don't bother us this close to home," Yua tries to reason with him. "It's... Mimi will be upset with you, so..."
"Dude, chill," Para-Mind grins, as he hands over a case. (Club music is still, agonisingly, pounding through the car.) "You seriously gotta hide behind that chick for every little thing, or you just into the view?"
"Sir!" Yua barks, face writ in tension, as she doesn't even notice the case. "For the millionth time, please!"
"S'cool, I bet that'll stop bein' funny the million an' oneth time," Para-Mind laughs, having a great time riling her up. "Anyway, situational awareness, idiot, check the case."
Yua takes it, finally, opening it up -- to find a new series of things like bullets, each carefully constructed to fit her revolver-chamber Evoker. "Dr. Harry dropped these off the other day," Para-Mind says to her, as her singular red eye scans over them, her fingertips following with a ginger motion. "He said there's more where that came from, so expect me to show up with more of these cases, wouldja?"
"You would make me more a weapon," she speaks up, finally, and her soft voice threatens to be stolen by the thumping music twisting through the car's chassis.
It's not so quiet he can't hear her, though. "Phew, drama alert," Para-Mind chuckles, leaning back on the armrest of his door. "Maybe I just wanna make sure you're appraised of all the tools we got to keep ya safe with that clunky redesign of yours?"
"You don't care if I'm safe," Yua insists, still not looking at him. "You are too thirsty to behold what results."
"Yeaaaah, you right," Para-Mind shrugs, wagging a hand loosely. "Reality check! I'll pretend to care less next time, sweetheart."
Yua clasps the case closed, her eye closing as she lays a hand over it. "Please, take me home," she says, and tries to make it sound like a demand rather than a plea. "Our business is done."
(Para-Mind would score the effort a 2 out of 10 -- see him after class.)
"Heh heh... you've become a right little queen up in that tower of yours, eh?" He grins, as he leans forward. "But you'll always be queen consort," he warns her, his tone growing more dark, as his gaze leaves her too. "You're nothin' without that brick house beside you. You oughta be careful with that pride of yours... lotta guys coverin' for shrimp dicks, out here."
"I'm sorry," Yua flinches, reflexively, but Para-Mind just shrugs. "I assumed too much."
"Nah," he dismisses her cringing out of hand. "Read error, babe. That's not, like, 'I'm gonna get a hobo to strangle you when you get out of the car' -- just a friendly bit of advice."
"Then -- I know it carries risk," Yua frowns, looking out the tinted window beside her. She resents his reminder of Shiryuu's punishment, yet she speaks her mind, anyway. "But my abject submission is hardly costless, either. That is a wound I bear on the inside, and those are far more difficult to heal." She pauses, and ventures to ask: "Why bother warning me? You've always found my pain quite hilarious."
"That's 'cuz it is," Para-Mind shrugs. "On the other hand, that brick house of yours is the funniest thing to happen around here for ages. And your whole, like, 'oh, I'm one of the Honoured Chosen, oh wait, oh no, I'm a perversion of all that is sacred!'", he puts on a high voice, mocking Yua's sweet soprano, "... it's actually the funniest shit, man. Like, you oughta be queen, sure, but that crown of yours is fuckin' poison. Sick." He says it like it's a good thing, though Yua doesn't really get it. "Don't get me wrong, I ain't on your side... but I really wanna see how much damage you guys do before they give it up and sink the cost."
"I don't understand," Yua frowns, looking over to him again. "Whose side are you on, then?"
"Whatever's funniest at the time," Para-Mind assures her, before he taps at the driver's seat. "Yo, finish your lap, we're taking the consort back to her gilded cage."
And despite herself, Yua is at least grateful that they do take her home, when they could have whisked her anywhere else.