Quote:
While making your way through Destiny City, you wind up taking a path you’ve never taken before. Maybe you’re following directions, maybe you got lost, maybe you were just looking for a shortcut—things were going good, until you wind up needing to pass through a graveyard. It seems normal enough—until you pass by a grave and get powerful chill down your spine. When you stop and look at it, you see the gravestone has your name; beneath it, your birthday and today’s date. If you leave and return, the gravestone remains, but the name and dates look like they’ve been clawed off.
It wasn't that unusual for Encke to decide to take a new path through Destiny City while he was powered.
He was intimately familiar with the City, considering that he had lived there all his life, but the City was also constantly changing, constantly shifting and becoming something else as people tried to live away from danger, or, honestly, as the City did what all cities did--grew and changed and morphed and shifted.
The path he had chosen today, though, wasn't really a new path. The graveyard had been there for years, decades even. He just didn't tend to go through graveyards. They made him uncomfortable. They made his skin crawl. He didn't like thinking about the bodies that were kept under the earth, and he didn't like to think about the possibility of joining them, a possibility that was always rather present at the back of his mind. Being a senshi came with danger, and he knew that not all senshi who had awakened were still alive now. He hadn't personally known any of them, so far as he knew, but he wasn't oblivious.
And yet, there he was, walking through a cemetery.
It was good to know all the areas of the City, in case he ever needed to escape, right? A graveyard was easy to get lost in, especially near where there were large headstones and statues. He couldn't always run around a corner or two, wait a minute, and zap to his second home in the stars, as much as he wished he could.
He kept a fairly fast pace, though, looking around in an attempt to survey the area quickly so he could get out. He didn't really want to be here longer than he had to be, but he knew he should add this area to his map, anyway. So far, it seemed fairly mundane, all things considered. It was mostly gravestones, some statues, a mausoleum, and --
His eyes caught a gravestone that looked ... off, and he squinted at it. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to go closer, but he could take a moment to take a look at it, right? If he just walked away from it, he would be wondering about the stone all night.
Encke sighed once, and then again, before moving forward to take a look at the gravestone.
Did that --
He squinted.
Ignacio Araya was the first thing he saw clearly, and his breath caught in his throat, before he told himself no, it was fine. Araya was a common enough Hispanic last name, right? Ignacio was definitely a common first name in the Spanish-speaking world. It was fine. There was no way this meant anything, really. Just a coincidence that could have been easily explained--
June 3, 1992
No. No way.
How likely was it that he shared a birthday with another man with the same--
October 30th, 2017
Encke's heart turned to ice, and he froze for several moments too long. It took a moment, but then he felt his heart pounding. He was panicking. No. No no no no. His mind was a chorus of the same word, over and over, in varying tones. It took another moment before the feeling came back into his hands and feet, and then to his legs, which flew backwards, propelling him away from the gravestone as soon as possible.
He was getting out of there.
And he wasn't dehenshining for the rest of the night.
