[Finger Snap]

      For a beginner’s set, it does start quite strongly already, a mix of guitar and drums booming through the loudspeakers. Other than that the melody proceeds without incidents; no screaming or murderous instinct yet. That is… until the chorus hits, and the entire room vibrates under the pressure of strong beats laced with yelled words and the violence within them.

      “THERE’S BLOOD ON MY HANDS LIKE THE BLOOD IN YOOOOOOU! SOME THINGS CAN’T BE TREATED SO DON’T MAKE ME DON’T MAKE ME BE MYSELF AROUND YOOOOOOOOOOUU!!!!!”

Koutaro listens intently, trying to memorize the melody and vocals regardless of the fact that there was no way he was going to remember everything Ibuki showed him today. Except, maybe he would, because the song suddenly picks up in volume and so does Ibuki.

He startles, staring at Ibuki who was all but distracted by her own screaming. Louder than the song itself, Koutaro could only hear her as she drowned out the singer. 

So, she was one of those people. 

“Thanks.” He squints, trying to focus his vision. He wasn’t seeing double, but everything seemed hazy. He had been good with avoiding head injuries the entire week, though he should have guessed that his luck with that would also run out. Thankfully, Wataru was around.

“They’re spirits are in spirits, not ghosts.  They’re actual living beings with their own personalities.”  Lucy tapped the key with her fingertip.  “They live in the Stellar Spirit world, a place normal humans can’t go unless they’re invited - and even then you can’t survive without a special type of clothing.”  Lucy knew of only a handful of people who’d ever been there, and she was proud to say she’d been included in that number.  Her spirits loved her just as much as she loved them.  “And I do have Scorpio, although his key was taken from me when I arrived in this city.  I hope we can meet again soon, me and him and all the others.”

“You might get them back. Sometimes they return our things.” From what Koutaro had gleaned, it was usually after something big in the city had happened. Though, he had received his sword rather randomly. Nothing could ever be easy to figure out here and in the end it was just wild guesses.

@strike-form

[ ✥ ]—— For someone who never had fingers his whole life, he was quick to figure out how to button a shirt, put a pair of pants on, brush that hair to perfection, and other human-like activities he never thought he’d ever do in his whole life as a tiny bat. Kivat was no longer shocked by the reflection he saw from the mirror of their bathroom. The face of his partner, the body of his partner, everything that could remotely belong to his partner is now his own, although not for long, but who cares after all. 

      To think he could have obtained such an achievement through one single bite.

He winces, eyes still shut and laying on the ground. This wet feeling on his forehead..., did he run into the ladder hard enough to start bleeding? It certainly felt like it.

The voice of whoever was next to him was familiar. Something quiet and soft that Koutaro’s heard before. He sits up with a grunt and squints toward the direction of the person, still disoriented. 

“Wataru?” he says, starting to lift his hand to touch his forehead and check if he was actually bleeding. He decides against it. If he was, smudging it would make it worse. The voice belonging to Wataru wasn’t a surprise. Other than grandpa, Wataru was the only person with such a quiet voice that Koutaro knew.

      Even if that doesn’t work properly, there will still be the satisfaction of filling him in about the best genre of music there is. She finds it incredible that none of the bands, even the most popular ones that would make a random human snap ‘I KNOW THEM’ out loud, are known to anyone in the guy’s timeline. A different planet would have been understandable, but Earth… what kind of excuse would they have for such blasphemy?

      “WELCOME TO HELL!!!” So, she swings the door open and shrieks in a not so reassuring fashion. The room is filled to brim with random teenager things scattered around– mostly guitars, magazines, comics, videogames– and there’s especially a big stereo towering over a shelf above the desk. She hops over there and begins rummaging through the piles of music CDs that lay around in a haphazard state.

Unnerving exclamations aside, Koutaro was excited. Ibuki’s collection was large, which in hindsight wasn’t surprising. She was some sort of idol rock person, or at least Koutaro assumed so. Who else could afford so many instruments. He could hardly pay to buy one guitar, let alone enough to decorate a room.

“It doesn’t matter which one?” he says, flipping through her collection. He knits his brows. None of these names looked familiar. Was sixty years that large of a gap for music? He thought maybe there would be some overlap, that something that was a retro classic to him would be modern pop culture to Ibuki. There was no such luck.

As if to make a point, she reached down and pulled up the single golden key that she had with her.  “This key belongs to the Maiden, Virgo.  Through our contract I can summon her at any time, though being in this place has more or less put a damper on things.”  Lucy wondered if all the spirits she contracts with would be rather understanding over what was going on with her new location.  Given how fast gossip tended to travel in the spirit world she was certain everyone knew her circumstances, but that didn’t mean things would be easy when everyone was reunited.

“Spirits? So they’re like ghosts?” Koutaro still didn’t have much of a grasp on what she meant. Magic, actual magic, wasn’t really his area of expertise or anything. “Did you have Scorpio? he asks out of curiosity, maybe a little too excitedly. Astrology wasn’t something he paid a lot of attention to, but he was a Scorpio so clearly it was important. Hopefully it did something a little more useful than dig.

strike-form

          Gentarou couldn’t have been happier about fall’s arrival. He loved all of it. The weather, the outfits, and the leaves. Who didn’t love all the leaves? Sure maybe the trees were a little bare and scary, but the leaves always looked a lot nicer in a fall pallet of color. Gentarou had been taken advantage of the fallen leaves, and made himself a pretty reasonable sized pile. He decided he’d have to make a sick jump into this to make sure they all went flying and looked as badass as possible. A running start wouldn’t do it. No no, he’d need the help of a special buddy of his.

         Gentarou whipped out his driver and slapped it on, intending only to use one switch. He slammed the lever and transformed, standing face to face with the leaves, observing his crunchy victim through his bug eyes. He took a couple steps back, and flipped on the rocket switch, taking straight to the skies. He’d dive bomb into these leaves and leave a crater of leafy destruction so big that citta would have to consider it a monument. He did a loop around through the air, and began his dive towards the leaves. 

          He was coming in at an angle, and had it perfectly lined up– that is, until a person was walking between him and the leaves. He tried to shout out, to no prevail. Gentarou turned off rocket and slammed straight into the poor unknowing civilian, taking them right into the pile of leaves with him.

Did he trip? No, the force he fell with was too strong for it to have simply been him tripping over his own feet. The answer is clear when someone speaks up, his would be assailant.

“Gentarou..?” Well, at least it was someone he knew. One of the riders who ran the club. While Koutaro never had a true conversation with him, it was hard to not know Gentarou, who sort of flitted across their meetings with boundless energy (and also managed to break into the Milk Dipper before it opened?).

[ ♬ ]—— She surely expected Koutaro to splutter and blabber excuses, but the end result is even better than what she calculated. When the armor breaks away and his flushed face appears, Ibuki could split her head in half from how wide she’s grinning. That doesn’t look like the expression of someone who merely sees his companion as just a friend.

      “Hmmmm, right! Your face is red because of heat then, isn’t it? Ibuki was sure she upped the AC today~!” Chuckling softly, she gains composure and then shoves her knuckles over her hips in a determined pose. If she were to tease further, he might leave in shame, and there are other things they’re supposed to do. Besides, she can bring it back up anytime later. 

      “Okay then! Ibuki thinks it’s time for the Best stuff! You’ve come here for the music, right?” She gestures towards the stairs. “C’mon, follow Ibuki towards her personal Heaven!”

His only response is to scowl. Yes, it’s hot, he wants to say. That would only continue the current topic and if Ibuki was already dropping it (which was extremely suspicious), then Koutaro was glad to wipe his hands free and continue.

The real reason he had come over, if not to finally get out of his own apartment after a couple days, was for something important. Hailing from the future meant that his knowledge of specific things in the past was limited. It wasn’t a problem before, really. The only times he went to the past was for Den-O related things and he never stayed too long.

Except, he’d been in the city for a while now and his unfamiliarity with past technology and topics was starting to become obvious, especially with pop culture. Either it was because the people here were all from different worlds or there was a gap between the times everyone was from. If Koutaro had to take a guess, it was probably a bit of both.

      If Koutaro says it’s a good idea, then it will work. Clearly.

      “I’ll do that! Thank you so much, Koutaro-san!” He stops again to bow his head in gratitude, his body shaking, fretting and starting to get impatient. “We must hurry to the station then! C’mon, we’re gonna miss the train!” His legs precede the end of his sentence as he begins rushing with faster steps, swinging the bag containing Hikawa’s ball back and forth.

As calm as his words were, he grimaced. He was on top of technology when it came to fighting for justice, but he barely knew his way around a cell phone. The one he held now was much different, so at least that was one excuse.

Okay, at least whoever this was wasn’t completely in the dark.

“Not really. Maybe? Usually the people pulled here have something going on with them. It’s hard to keep track of.” Maybe to some other person he could be seen as someone who used magic too, especially with the time travel stuff. It was all relative, he guesses. 

Fairy Tail... he was sure he had heard something like that in passing. It wasn’t enough to mention it to her. It could have just been someone talking about a book, like the one in his hands. Koutaro shakes his head. “Not really. This is for my grandpa and our cafe.” He would pick stuff up here and there back home, but not enough to warrant the title of a fan. Maybe he should start reading more. There wasn’t a lot to do in the city and who knew how much longer he would be stuck here. It was probably a good thing that he wasn’t a reader, though. He could spoil a lot of things for people if that were the case.