Prologue: Wearing Heelies to Escape Our Feelies
Somebody once told us some cripple was gonna roll us,
We ain't the smoothest wheels on the skate.
He was acting kind of shitty when he tried to see some tiddy,
But we weren't fooled by his bait.
Well, the Roads start running and they don't stop running,
Fed to the Shark and we hit the sky gunning;
Didn't make sense not reach for the sky,
Our feet kick the ground so we can fly!
Climb up the winds, climb up the tower,
We'll burn up the sky like a meteor shower!
We'll never fly if we don't run;
He'll never die if we don't G U N.
Hey now, we're a shitpost, get your lame on, get dank;
Hey now, we're a memelord, get the dab on, go wank;
And all our dignity is sold,
Only JoJo references fight the gold...
Trent Blackmore looked to the afternoon sky, not recognizing the metropolitan labyrinth he found himself within. The skyscrapers were tall and crowded, the skyline almost reminiscent of Toronto, which honestly made his stomach turn. He hated Toronto.
He adjusted his backpack on his shoulders as he stepped from the alley he'd ended up in after turning down a similar one in Nova Scotia. The crowds milling about were comprised of people of mostly Asiatic descent, his Aryan features making him stick out, he supposed that he should be lucky that his dark winter jacket and jeans combination weren't out of place for the season (which he would describe as warm). Seeing no clear landmarks, he pulled out his phone to see if he could get information that way, only to find that he had no signal of any sort.
The Canadian sighed. "One Timmy's run and it ends in this horseshit."
He scanned the area quickly, and settled for heading what looked to be a public park; maybe he could find a police officer or something who could tell him where he was…
Of course, when he actually reached the park, he found that there was a large exercising group weaving through the park on rollerblades. This drew a look of confusion from the young man as he hadn't seen a pair of rollerblades in years, let alone an entire cavalcade of them.
Dodging around them as they rolled in his direction, he found a bench and took a seat as his bag was feeling heavier then it had upon his leaving his dorm. Unzipping it, he found an odd pair of rollerblades that he didn't recognize along with some of his effects. Pulling out one half of the paired footwear, he held it up and examined it.
They were mostly black with white highlights, very plain, though they were a bit heavier than how he remembered rollerblades being. His eyes trailed across them, noting that the wheels looked to be almost metallic but nothing else until they caught on a certain brand emblazoned on the heel of the boot.
"Air Treks…?" he wondered aloud, and after a few moments of the term echoing around inside his head, he turned his gaze skyward once more. "Oh fuck all kinds of ducks!" he swore at the azure heavens, which didn't seem to give much of a shit.
As crows took flight from the trees around Trent, quite possibly fearing for their chastity thanks to a distinct lack of water-fowl in the vicinity, the irate foreign devil received many curious glances from the other people in the park. One of those people, however, was also such a foreigner (and had also just woken up in a nearby bush, but that was neither here nor there). Said young man shook his head to clear the cobwebs, then extricated himself from the foliage, brushing leaves off of his jeans and picking a twig out from betwixt the buttons of his grey dress shirt.
As he rose to his feet and took a step out of the bush, his foot caught on the strap of a bag that had been concealed among the lower branches. With a loud thump, the youth slammed into the ground, throwing out his arms so that his flattened forearms took the brunt of the impact, rather than his delicate, bishie bespectacled face.
The blond on the bench, startled by the pasty white boy who had just slammed into the ground, put the rollerblade back in the bag and asked, "You okay dude? Cause I've seen people break their wrists from shit like that."
The brunet looked up from where he'd fallen, untangling himself from the strap of the bag and shifting to a cross-legged sitting position. Rubbing said wrists, he replied in a noticeably Southern accent, "Nah, I'm good; I got taught how to disperse my falling momentum in self-defense. Thanks for asking, though." He looked around himself for a few moments, taking in the scenery and the few advertisements that were scattered throughout the park, before speaking again. "...This ain't North Carolina," he commented flatly, though there was a distinct undertone of fear in his voice. "How the fuck did I end up in Japan?!"
"S'not just some place's little Asia?" the Canadian questioned, before following the brunet's gaze and stopping on a large billboard completely covered in kanji. "I suppose not then. One more thing to add to the pile, upside is, at least we aren't outside the country where the Sky Regalia is…" He trailed off there and then put his face in his hands, "Goddamnit, Sora's gonna fuckin' send a mech army at Kyoto… Fuckin' Sora."
The other boy paused for a moment, having risen to his feet in the time it had taken for Trent to speak. What few drops of melanin remained in his already-pale face fled for safer harbour. "Oh my god I've been isekai'd into Air Gear," he stated faintly, wobbling on his feet. "I think I need to sit down...and some fucking chocolate."
"Well, sit down then, better to be on the ground than liable to fall over, or you could join me on this lovely bench. Also, you're not the only one who got isekai'd into this shitshow, so, misery and company," the blond offered as he scooched down the bench.
The bespectacled brunet grabbed the bag that had almost been his bane, flopped down beside him, then pulled off his glasses and pinched his forehead as he breathed through his nose. "Well, that's something," he replied halfheartedly. "Name's Johan," he offered a moment later. "You?"
"'M Trent, Trent Blackmore," the Canadian replied as he considered the Air Treks in his bag. They were basically just super-rollerblades that let people fly. He pulled the one he'd just been looking at back out of his bag and brandished it at the brunet. "Upside, at least I don't have to shell out for these expensive things."
"...Trent Blackmore? Does the title 'A Very Mean Albino' mean anything to you?" Johan asked, a faint glint of hope visible in the blue behind his glasses.
The blond blinked at the mention and turned to look at the other man, and after a moment asked, "Johan… Xan, is that you? Because if so, I'm really glad I'm not alone in this shitshow."
Johan laughed. It was a hollow sound, devoid of mirth. "Yep, that's me. Though I guess I'm a prisoner of a Nightmare rather than the Author of it. Shame Baka's not here; a man who killed two bears in our world is probably baseline Captain Canada in this world."
"It'd be a trip, that's for sure – but well, instead you have me, so I guess you're just going to have to deal," Trent shot back as he balanced the AT in his hand. He studied it once again, noting that it was the correct size for his foot as well as weighing it idly. "Of course, we technically have to deal with worse than bears. Also, figure out how close we are to the inevitable clusterfuck."
Johan chuckled awkwardly, waving his hands. "I didn't mean to insinuate I'd rather have Baka over you; just the opposite! I'm about about as useful as tits on a bull, what with the whole 'fear of heights and speed' deal."
"We can work on it… wanna try these things out?" the blond inquired with a nod to the rollerblade.
Johan considered the bag on his lap. "Fuck it. What's the worst that can happen?"
Trent chuckled grimly as he shucked off his boots, exposing the onomatopoeia-laden socks he was wearing as he pulled out his orthotics and replaced the ATs' insoles with them. Forcing his feet into the rollerblades, he quickly tied the laces and forced himself upright, gripping his bag in one hand. He took a few strides around the area, gathering some speed, a confident smile worming its way onto his face. The Canadian laughed and declared, "This isn't too hard at all!"
"...Don't they have, like, Sakuradite engines or some shit in them?" Johan asked, examining his own pair (which were much like Trent's, except where his had white trim, Johan's had crimson) and brushing a thumb over a switch.
The Canuck blinked and then nervously looked down at his footwear, noticing a small switch on their interior sides. He looked to his comrade and declared, "If I die, tell everyone 'Hello.'"
With that, he switched the engines on. And went nowhere.
After a moment, he remembered, "Right, they need either weight or someone to move on them to get them going." He leaned forward, and his feet immediately shot forward with very little regard to the rest of him, wrecking his balance and toppling him onto his back within the first couple of metres. Glaring at the sky, he grumbled, "Fuck."
Johan walked over to the other man and offered him a hand up. Taking the hand, Trent pulled himself to his feet and remarked, "Forgot about the acceleration. So, that's on me."
Johan shrugged. "Not everyone can be 'the Strongest Babyface' or 'Mr. No Mercy For Wheelchairs' on their first time, I'm sure. Meh, I'm sure I'll fuck up much worse than you." With those nigh-prophetic words, the brunet put on the instruments of his demise Air Treks, turned on the motors, and put the slightest bit of pressure on each…only to have one shoot forward and the other back, pulling Johan into a split that ordinarily he'd have needed five minutes of stretching to achieve.
"Jesus Christ…" Trent gasped at the sight before him.
The noise that escaped Johan's mouth was akin to that of a dying cat being used to deflate a balloon through blunt force trauma.
Before the two foreigners could react any further, they heard a shrill scream off in the distance, which drew not only their attention, but that of everyone else in the park. In the direction of the voice, they saw something speeding towards them at an incredible speed. Dirt and grass was lifted into the air at its advance. As it got closer and closer, they could see that it was a person wearing glasses.
He, which was about all they could really tell about the figure at the speed they were going, was barely managing to keep his balance as he swung his arms wildly and rocked his torso back and forth. Even so, he wasn't anywhere near stopping – and the stranger was on a collision course with Johan to boot. Realizing what was about to happen, the stranger tried to jerk himself out of the way, but in his struggle he instead managed to spread his feet apart sideways.
The Canadian watched the trainwreck unfolding before his eyes, horror taking hold of his stomach – and his face too, as it contorted into a rictus of sympathetic pain to match the stranger's when the man's crotch impacted against Johan's face. Johan, already fucking dead from the involuntary split he'd undergone, experienced a level of suffering as of yet undiscovered by humans as he received a faceful of ballsack. The duo were only shielded from The Big Gay by a thin layer of denim.
No noise escaped the three of them, all of them stuck in a picture perfect moment of tragedy.
It was at that moment that the third person screamed to the heavens, his voice reaching deafening heights and sending vibrations across his entire frame from his throat.
Looking at the tangle, Trent quietly asked, "…You guys want a hand?"
The Canadian looked between the other two men, both of whom were resting on the bench that he and Johan had sat on for their initial pow-wow.
"You guys…doing a bit better?"
"I'm sure my descendants up to the seventh generation will still feel that," the newcomer groaned, a hand still holding onto his beaten meat.
"If you still have the ability to have any," Johan quipped through a grimace.
"Totally fair, man. Totally fair," he replied instantly, letting out a heavy breath.
"Sooo...you're not from around here, either," Johan observed bluntly, glancing at the bespectacled stranger's features. The man was taller than the average Japanese, so that was already a point that made him stick out. There was also his heavy wool jacket and black t-shirt with a print of a green and orange jaguar to consider, all of which was covered in dirt and grass like the rest of him including a bit of his medium-length black hair.
"...Yeah, sure, let's go with that," he grunted while scratching at his chin, which had a bit of a stubble. "I'm new to this city."
"Yeah, we are too. The name's Johan Lewis." He raised an eyebrow at Trent, prompting the Canuk to stop standing off to one side like a post and introduce himself, dammit!
The Canadian kept from leaning too far in any directions on his Air Treks and chimed in, "I'm Trent Blackmore, and honestly surprised I wasn't the one who got pulled into that car wreck, given my luck."
The other man stared at the two displaced men, his expression turning to shock for a second before he spoke up. "Ok, this might come a bit out left field, but tell me what you think of the following sentence," he said while rising a finger. "'Old men are best men.'"
Johan perked up. "I'd say that it's pretty fucking subarashii."
"I mean, if that's what you're into on your side of the wall," Trent joked, trying to lighten the situation with some humour.
"No fuckin' way..." he exclaimed with genuine joy in his face. "Is it really you guys? Xan? Trent?"
"No, I'm just a pile of snow shaped into Trent's Aryan perfection that he's voicing from miles away," the blond snarked as he lightly shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"I knew that the power of your Stand, 「Snowblind」, wasn't truly cocaine generation!" Johan snarked. "You've lied to me for the last time, you wretched snow-Mexican!"
The shit-eating grin rather ruined any potential seriousness of the statement.
Trent simply threw back his head and cackled, "Your first mistake was assuming you knew what my Stand was! Ladies, gentlemen,「BREAKBOT」! We gottem."
"Oh my god, it is you. Holy shit." The man let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "I'm glad to know I'm not in this alone."
The blond shrugged, "I mean, I'd make a joke about all of us being in this together, but I hated the High School Musicals."
Johan shot the aforementioned Goddamned Monster a gimlet eye. "Trent, kindly commit not feeling so good. Thank you."
The third man just chuckled at the two's byplay and shook his head.
Trent looked to their third and said, "Well, you know our names, what about you Oldman?"
"Yeah, jii-chan. Tell us your name!" Johan interjected, grinning like a loon. "Or do you want to break my delicate little kokoro?"
"Not going with, brokoro your kokoro...I am disappoint, son," Oldman replied with a chuckle.
"Meanwhile, you two playing the weeb card is giving me cancer, so can we get on with it?" the Canadian asked in exasperation.
"Yeah, that's enough meming to fuel me for a little while," Oldman agreed. "Name's Alphonse Crane, by the way."
Johan's grin increased in girth as he stated, "I'm gonna call you Dickabod Crane."
"Oh shit, that's a good one," Crane commented while shaking a limp hand from the wrist as if he'd burned himself. "So...how long you been here?"
"Like, fifteen minutes," Trent replied honestly.
"Same for me," Johan added.
"I'm no good with time, but I think that sounds about right," Alphonse mused. "Went to buy a Steam card and some cup noodles at my local OXXO...when I stepped out, I saw a completely different street and when I turned around, I saw a Lawson."
The Canuck hummed. "Well, I was on a quick Tim Horton's run and turned down an alley for a short cut, ended up walking out into the street over there." He nodded towards the way he had come.
"Meanwhile, I was taking a nap on the couch because migraines are a bitch," Johan added, "and then I woke up in a bush and fell over my bag."
"Well, we're all here, and in one piece, so that's an upside. The downside is that we've gotta learn how to actually ride these things," Trent opined, consciously keeping from shifting his weight despite his desire to drop into a squat. "Because I don't know about you guys, but at the very least, I want to be able to do something when Sora decides to enact his terrorism plans."
"Oh...fuck, right." Alphonse paled at the canuck's words. "That motherfucker takes rollerskating way too fucking seriously."
The blond shrugged, "Well, I'm pretty sure it was because he and his brother were the weakest Gravity Children and he wanted to stand above everyone else as a result… But yeah, fucker kills way too many people."
"A fucking inferiority complex is no reason to literally burn a city, brainwash people, treat others like literal parts of his wheelies and attempt to sacrifice his preggo girlfriend to hype himself up!" Crane all but screamed in response. "What the fuck!?"
Johan gritted his teeth and nodded. "Yeah," he replied hoarsely, "that fucker needs to be stopped."
"Now, I never tried to excuse it, just explain his start down the slope. And wow, putting it like that, fuckboy just did a fucking swan dive off the slippery slope…" Trent murmured, thinking on it some. "Also, we need to fucking have a word with Kilik about how shitty he is at killing people."
"God, Sleeping Forest..." Alphonse muttered. "Well, he sure as shit isn't going to listen to a bunch of nobodies. Not like we can even get inside the tower..."
Trent offered another shrug, "Well, it's a clusterfuck anyway. We need info on pretty much everything, to see if Ikki's even formed Kogarasumaru or if Sora's going to launch his attack on Kansai tomorrow. Christ, we've just got a heap of problems, don't we?"
"Shit, where do we even sleep, guys?" Alphonse questioned.
The Canadian piped up, "Well, I'm sure that Behemoth wouldn't mind us slumming it in Under-Colosseo, place's a sty anyway."
"As much as living like a hobo doesn't particularly appeal to me, I don't see many other choices, unfortunately," Johan agreed with a sigh. "Unless our bags magically have fat stacks of yen, of course?"
"Can we...like, consider a few more options before choosing to go to the literal stripclub-slash-thunderdome? I'm really not super hyped about the idea." Alphonse winced at the suggestion. "'Sides, we don't even know where the place is."
Johan shrugged. "I mean, we could always pull an Akiyama and go slum it in the Millenium Tower Hobo Palace, assuming we can find it."
At that moment, a hyena-like laugh cut through the air, causing the three of them to whirl around and catch sight of a manhole rising out of its place in the ground. As it shifted aside, a man wearing only a snakeskin jacket over over his bare chest rose from within, his hair cut high on the sides and falling wildly. He wore a snake emblazoned eyepatch over one eye, while the uncovered one seemed to have a crazed glint in it, he had a very light dusting of facial hair, but a wide grin. His gloved hands braced themselves on the ground as he catapulted himself out of the manhole, landing stylishly in the park proper, his leather pants gleaming in the sunlight.
Looking between the trio, the man remarked, "Ya know, I was just doing as I do, investigatin' certain things, gettin' dirt and whatnot, when I heard someone mention Millenium Tower. S'been a while, since I heard that name, y'know?"
Johan blinked once, twice, thrice. "I'm not sure how I feel about this," he muttered, stupefied by the man–no, the legend, in front of them.
"Ditto," Alphonse quipped, equally dumbfounded and more than a little on edge.
Trent stared at the man before them, noting the tattoos peeking out from his coat's lapels, marking him quite clearly as the authentic article. He couldn't help but mutter, "How powerful is the Majima Everywhere System?"
"So, you gents know about Kamurocho then. Good," the eyepatched man declared as he sauntered towards them. "I heard you boys were in need a funds, and well, I heard a lil bit of what you mentioned 'fore that. I think we might be able to make a deal, whaddaya say?"
One couldn't really call it a deal with the devil; all in all, it was more like offering their hands to a rabid dog, seeing as the man before them couldn't be anything else. After all…
This was the man who had torn his way through entire buildings full of Yakuza, armed with only a knife, all for the sake of a single woman and what he decided to stand for. He fought and killed an infamous and widely feared assassin at the end of that gauntlet, establishing his reputation in the Yakuza world. He went on to reinforce that image over the course of almost two decades, his ferocity and unhinged actions making him feared while his loyalty earned him praise. A master of many fighting styles and weapons, a consummate professional and entrepreneur, and far more intelligent than he appeared at first blush.
He was quite clearly the Mad Dog of Shimano, Goro Majima.
