This is Echo-san's domain. It's all but certain we are being watched at every moment. In that case, it's not so difficult to believe such a powerful entity might be able to revive a person from their instant of death.

[Though the implications are a bit alarming when he considers that Sam's corpse was supposedly literally eaten, which either means 1) Hannibal was lying 2) Echo has the power to recreate an identical copy of a dead body from scratch and replace a consciousness within it. Occam's razor would suggest the former explanation, but he'll reserve judgment for now. More important is the following:]

But it's considerably different if Echo is able to reverse death outside of those parameters, from various worlds with different metaphysics, which presumably aren't as readily monitored in real time.

None of our universes have been destroyed yet. Aurora-chan confirmed that they will not be as long as we continue to participate in missions.

[Which in its own right is concerning, honestly. What happens when you don't comply? How immediately does it happen? Or was that answer its own sort of test?]

To my understanding, what Echo-san intends to do is not save universes directly, but preserve the integrity of the multiverse by culling some of the individual universes within it. What we're here to do is convince Echo-san to spare ours from destruction.

That's a false equivalence. Destructive power, regardless of the scale, isn't equivalent to the ability to restore what's already been lost.

I already explained the difference in revivals here and the possibility of reviving someone from a different universe entirely. There's at least one universe out there with its own afterlife, so there is considerable room for ambiguity to what extent your corpse was a corpse when it was brought here.

[He's definitely not about to give away his reasons for wanting to know quite specifically what state Vincent's corpse was in. The hollow cheer that was briefly absent in his tone as he'd gotten serious returns, just as abruptly.]

If you don't know, that's fine! I was just curious~

Imagine the potential value of our experiences to science!

You know, it's interesting. For someone who didn't enjoy his death, you're awfully defensive of it. An average person might jump at the opportunity to believe there could be hope for their survival, that their existence here might have implications for their continued existence once this is all over.

[There goes all that cheer again, instead sharpened down to a blade to hold at Vincent's throat.]

Don't pretend to be so devastated. You want to be dead. I'd go as far as to wager you're frustrated you're alive now.

Did I ever claim to be? Your deflections are embarrassingly transparent.

Almost as tragic as an insecure man who tries to hurt others to hide his own weakness and fear, but has too little imagination to even accomplish that much!

Wow, and the lack of imagination continues. Are you quite sure you ever left the third grade? Rubber and glue is rather outdated, I'm afraid.

It's truly sad how a person can spout nonsense and believe they're getting somewhere.

[Vincent might be in the right ballpark, but he's somewhere off in the outfield, well away from stealing home, this time, and Dazai's back up to bat again. Alright. If Vincent wants to play, he'll play for real.]

What will happen to you if you're not really dead, I wonder? Do you go to jail, perhaps? Into hiding from your would-be murderer? Or maybe it's simpler than that, maybe you've convinced yourself your death has some greater meaning, because otherwise you'd have to live out the rest of your meaningless life with the realization that you're truly insignificant, a confluence of molecules floating in a cosmic soup tens of billions of orders of magnitude greater than you are.

[He laughs, nails on broken glass.]

Hey, you were talking to Castiel-san, right? Did you know in his world, there are people who were killed in holy wars fighting for the wrong God? They didn't even know until they woke up in a different afterlife than they were expecting! Say, Vsmith-kun, do you think you'll go to the right one, after we're done here?

Now, now, don't make excuses. If you set out to do something, you really ought to put in the proper effort~

[git gud, scrub.]

Pretending to be above it all only makes you look more desperate, especially with all that projecting you're doing. You want to believe in your God so badly, and yet, they're not here, are they? Echo has you instead, and this God of yours has done nothing to retrieve you.

[He smiles all the brighter.]

What will you do with all that faith of yours, if your universe is destroyed? Even Aurora-chan can't actually promise any of us are really in the running to save our universes.

Ohhhh, I see, an apocalypse seeker, then. Suits the unreasonably inflated ego, I suppose.

[A guess, but one he's pretty confident in, from that reaction. He lets out an exaggerated sigh.]

People like you truly are embarrassing. You don't have the courage to end things for yourself, so you try to drag everyone down with you in a huge dramatic production, it's really pathetic!

That's just it, though. There isn't anything. Do you think a flower needs faith to turn toward the sun? Do birds need faith to migrate south for the winter?

[He is lonely, in a sense. The only person who ever really tried to understand him is dead. But Vincent is wrong that he doesn't have anything, because it's that beloved person that leads him to try for a world that doesn't matter, in which he has nothing and every action is ultimately so much ash and dust in the wind. Because being on the side that saves people is just a little more beautiful, and Odasaku had wanted that for him.]

Faith was invented because humans fear death. We don't have the speed of cheetahs, the sheer strength of bears, the ability to resist extreme temperatures or natural defenses to ... well, anything, a sharp enough stick will kill us. Humans alone gained the ability to reflect on their mortality, though, and so they invented faith as a means of protecting themselves from the inevitability of that fear and pain. Some seek solace in the notion of an immortal soul, one which transcends the physical body and allows one the promise of rejoining those they have lost, someday, or a cycle of wanderings until eventual spiritual liberation from suffering as a concept can be attained. Others believe there is a little of the divine in everything, in the day to day.

[Dazai is a well and proper nerd, ultimately; he's read plenty on every kind of faith there is.]

...Unfortunately, there's also those that use faith as an excuse to pretend superiority over others, enough so to assume whatever they say is so significant that anyone who happens to have paid attention must be fixated on them specifically. Insufferable people like them always cause more damage than they're worth before finally fading away into obscurity, having accomplished exactly none of their grand goals while the world continues to persist.

You cling to a promise of something more that may never come. I already know there is nothing, and so I have nothing to lose, yet everything to gain.