"I think crying is really funny."
-Rebecca Sugar
Well, that explains a lot!
I just want to take a moment to thank everyone that have left reviews and supported this story. It really means a lot to me. Thank you all.
But without further ado, letäs get into the story!
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Lamp Entertainment presents…
Four people were hastily making their way through the streets of the city, like so many other people. Just four tourists, three teens, and one adult, a father or uncle perhaps. Maybe they were making their way towards a hotel, or a relative or a friend.
Any casual observer looking in wouldn't be able to tell anyway.
Of course, the eyes following the four stand users didn't belong to any casual observer.
From within darkness thick enough to leave regular humans blind, she followed them tirelessly.
Oh no, she was no casual observer. And she was far, far from a regular human.
She licked her lips. Some primal instinct. She had never really enjoyed killing before. Only the money. But this… this kill she was going to enjoy.
Chapter 12: Sweet and the Psycho, Act 1
One night in Empire City makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Empire City and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel a devil walking next to me
Empire City! One of the modern day's wonders. Countless tales had been spun about this one city. So many, in fact, that some people refused to believe such a city could even exist.
The lights, the sounds, the people, the overwhelming stimuli coming from everywhere all at once… the saying is true, what happens in Empire City never sleeps. Even though the night had replaced the day there was still an abundance of nightclubs, bars, restaurants and an assortment of stores still open.
One such business was a restaurant called Ted's Moon.
It was a small and pretty anonymous place, not much making it stick out from the myriad of other, much more interesting restaurants and diners one could find in the large city. A few tables scattered throughout a room, and a simple buffet with a few options for dinner.
Normally, the business closed around seven, but a friend had asked Ted (after whom the restaurant was named) to keep it open for an hour or two longer.
The nightlife of Empire City had much more interesting venues than this humble place, so there were only two people in the building at the time, enjoying that uncomfortable silence that is made between two strangers.
However, all that changed quickly with a 「Ding Dong」from the doorbell and the entrance of…
"Oh, being in this city is almost nostalgic!" Okuyasu exclaimed. The boisterous boy made a huge gesture with his arms like he wanted to embrace the city. "I used to live in Tokyo with my dad and bro, you know. It was a lot like this city." A walk through the city had reinvigorated him, filling him with new energy after the tiring flight… more so than it had his friends.
"Mhm…" Josuke mumbled absentmindedly, staring at his phone.
"Did you see that tower we passed by? That totally looked like the Tokyo Tower! My brother took me there once. I nearly fell off and died!"
"That's nice Okuyasu," Josuke answered, his eyes still glued to the phone.
"Thanks, I was scared to death… Hey! Are you even listening?"
Jotaro ignored the sounds of Okuyasu strangling Jouske behind him. He instead diverted his attention to the owner and namesake of the establishment.
"Hello Ted," he said in English. "I apologize for…" Ted interrupted him with a laugh and hugged Jotaro. An audible gasp escaped the three teens, Okuyasu and Josuke dropping their feud in a second. Someone casually hugged Jotaro!? What new spore of madness was this?
"Always nice to see you, Jotaro!" Ted said, the marine biologist in question looking extremely awkward. Like a mannequin. "You always bring something unique with you."
"D-did that just happen?" Okuyasu whispered and stared in disbelief. "Did he just hug Jotaro?"
"This journey just keeps on getting weirder and weirder," Josuke whispered back. The shadow of Crazy Diamond was hovering behind him. He had instinctively summoned his stand, expecting to have to heal the restaurant owner from the beating he was due to receive after his transgression.
"U-unbelievable," Koichi mouthed. Truly, this was a bizarre adventure.
Ted turned to the teens, smiling and chuckling at their reactions. "Hello," he said in English. "I'm afraid I don't speak Japanese, I hope English will suffice?"
"Oh, um… Of course!" Josuke said. He offered the man his right hand. Ted took it and shook it. "I am Higas… Josuke. Josuke Higashikata. Jotaro's uncle."
"Koichi Hirose. Pleased to meet you."
"Um… I'm… Niji-uh… Okuyasu. I am Okuyasu Nijimura."
"And I am Ted Guardestad," Ted said and shook all of their hands. "Very nice meeting you all. It is my experience that Jotaro has very… interesting friends." He made a quick gesture towards the back of the restaurant. Next to a door, a ghastly figure in a red bellhop uniform manifested. The figure bowed in greetings before flickering out of existence.
Tonight was full of surprises!
"You're a stand user?" Josuke asked. "Are you another agent from the Spee…"
"Stand user, yes," Ted said interrupted him, with a notably lower tone. "She, on the other hand…" He motioned towards the pink haired woman who was looking at the group with an amused smile. "…she is not."
"Ted is a… friend of mine," Jotaro explained in Japanese. "I met him a few years when he first started manifesting his stand. He's not part of the Speedwagon Foundation, just a civilian stand user."
The boys nodded. Just like Tonio home in Morioh. Though hopefully, their intestines wouldn't explode out of their stomachs to fix diarrhea when they ate his food.
As if on cue, Ted spoke up.
"Oh, but where are my manners?" he said. "You must be starving after the long travel. Please…" he gestured towards the buffet. "Have some food. It's on the house."
"If you say so," Josuke smiled and bowed. Okuyasu and Koichi followed suit. Ted had been bang on the money with his guess; they really were hungry. Turns out all the jokes had a kernel of truth to them. Airline food wasn't very good.
"You do know I can pay for food, right?" Jotaro shook his head. "You don't have to pamper me."
"No please, it's the least I can do," Ted assured him. "You've helped me a lot, and you've helped the world a lot… giving you a warm meal is really the least I can do."
"Hmph. I think you ove…"
「DING DONG」
The doorbell cut him off before Jotaro had the time to protest.
"Excuse me, are you still open? A pale woman with platinum hair had entered the restaurant. "The sign with opening hours say you're closed, but the sign on the door still says open, so…?" She spoke with a southern European dialect… Italian, maybe?
Behind her walked a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a hideous yellow smiley face beanie.
"I'm sorry to bother you if you're not open, we'll just find some other place…" the woman excused herself.
"No no, please, if you're already here," Ted quickly said and hurried over to the counter.
"Oh, thanks," the woman said. "My name's Ava. Ava Fusili."
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Somewhere Else, Sometime Earlier…
So. Aliens.
From the heavens fell a spaceship. Red, shaped like an upside-down teardrop and with a large yellow eye on it.
Hayato had, of course, realized something was up with these two weird ladies. Blue and red skin wasn't exactly a common trait. And the blue lady calling him 'human' was also weird too.
But Hayato hadn't actually thought that… he had heard about the guy Mikitaka claiming to be an alien… but this was just… crazy. Actual aliens!? He was ready to believe in psychic ghost powers that could break every conceivable law of physics, but aliens? Now you've gone too far.
The spaceship slowed its descent and gently set down in the grass. A hatch opened on its side, inside, he could glimpse a large room… seemingly bigger on the inside… and with two other people waiting inside.
Lucky clapped her hands. "Excellent!" she said. She walked up the hatch forming a little ramp, the small red woman carrying Hayato following in her footsteps.
The inside was a large round room, with several computer consoles and chairs.
"Punctuality like this is why I wanted you to come with me on this little mission, Gamma," Lucky said, gesturing towards one of the two women in the spaceship.
Her skin was green, her hair a light yellow-greenish, and in the shape of a pyramid. She was walking on metal stilts and had a green crystal in her chest. She didn't say anything but nodded.
"I thought you wanted her because of her electricity powers?" the other one said dryly. "And that's not her name."
She was tall and lean. Her skin was grey, gleaming like metal. She had short hair, colored in all the colors of the rainbow. She had a rod-shaped crystal stuck in through one eye, the tip coming through on the other end of the head. It looked like someone had hammered a large nail through one of her eyes.
She glanced at Hayato, and her eye twitched. "What is that, and why did you bring it with you?" she said in the same tone you might ask someone why they brought an icky insect inside.
"That is a small human," Lucky said. "A 'children' I think it's called."
"Is it that… the Josuke human you were looking for?"
"Unfortunately not… but it does know Josuke Higashikata, and I think it holds the key to finding him." From a pocket in her cape, she grabbed Hayato's phone that she had confiscated earlier. She handed it to the green lady.
"Here. It's some kind of communication device. My invisible friend tells me she tried to use it to contact Josuke Higashikata. See if you can figure out how to it works."
"Uh…sure," the green lady said. Two floating fingers grabbed the phone. She put on the control panel. She pressed the button on the front, and the display lit up. She began tapping on it, frowning.
"Good. Toaster, you can put the human down," Lucky said, and sat down at one of the panels. She pressed a few buttons. Only a faint vibration in the floor told Hayato that they were taking off.
"Um… where?" the red lady asked quietly.
"Use your imagination," the grey lady said.
Toaster, the red lady, looked around the room, for a few seconds, before settling on simply putting Hayato down where she was standing.
"Inspiring," the grey lady said and clapped her hands sarcastically. "Always a pleasure seeing rubies work their genius."
Toaster blushed and scampered over to the green lady. Gamma, Lucky had called her.
"Be nice, Iris," Lucky mumbled, looking over some space charts or something. "Remember what I told you about working together?"
"No. Do you remember what I told you about calling me by my real name?"
Lucky snorted but didn't say anything.
You know, something was reminding Hayato an awful lot of how his parents would sometimes fight, back when he had both parents.
Making sure not to make any moves that could be interpreted aggressive, Hayato crawled over and huddled up next to one of the control panels. The cold stare of the grey lady followed him.
"Tell me again…" she said. "…why you had to bring this… small human with you?"
"Hmh?" Lucky looked up from the screen. "I thought it was obvious why it would be useful, Iris?"
"I'm just a stupid quartz," 'Iris' said. "Use small words. And stop calling me that."
"Now, now," Lucky laughed. "That's simply not true, I think you're very clever, Iris…"
"That's not my name."
"…you just don't agree with me. Which is understandable, my plan is rather… unconventional."
"Not having a clue what you're doing is an unconventional tactic, yes."
Lucky glared at her grey companion not-named Iris. "Do you, or do you not want me to answer your question?"
'Iris' glared back, but didn't say anything. Lucky sighed.
"Three reasons," she said. "Firstly, she obviously knows more than she's letting on. As you so observantly pointed out, we're dealing with unknown factors, and we need as much information as possible." She started pacing back and forth inside the spaceship.
"Secondly, she has direct contact with Josuke Higashikata via that communication device. Thirdly, she might make for a good bargaining chip… should it come to that."
"And how do you know the Josuke human will want her back? It doesn't look very valuable."
"Oh please, humans are emotional creatures," Lucky said. "Even more so that us, Iris…
"Those nicknames are stupid, Moonstone," 'Iris' said.
Lucky's eye twitched. "Listen, if we want to this mission to succeed, we're going to need every advantage we can get our hands on. This includes confusion and blending in with huma…"
"Stupid."
"Your limited vocabulary is stupid," Lucky muttered. She sat back down and turned her back to the grey lady.
Not-Iris groaned and fixed Hayato with a cold stare. "Hey you," she said. "Small human. My name is Titanium. Titanium Quartz. Those two are Ruby and Peridot," she pointed to the red lady and the green lady respectively. "And she.." she pointed to 'Lucky.' "…she is Moonstone. You understand?"
Hayato nodded. He understood.
Moonstone's hands twitched. "Are you sure we shouldn't tell her our facets and cuts too?" She took a small blue crystal ball from her cape and spun it aggressively on the panel.
Titanium ignored her… leader? "Good," she said, nodding to Hayato. "If I hear you using those… moronic nicknames, I'll throw you off the ship, Moonstone's delusional plans damned. You get that?"
Hayato nodded again. He got it.
So. Not only were there aliens, and not only were those aliens kidnapping him… but they were also bickering like a dysfunctional family. Brilliant.
Hayato wasn't sure whether that meant he was in more or less danger.
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My Own Moon
User: Ted Guardestad
A cheerful and kind soul. Plays the guitar.
Appearance: Humanoid, clad in a red bellhop uniform. Rather than the traditional white gloves, MOM's hands are black, with white specks, like stars. Its face is divided by a crescent, one-half black like the night sky, the other silvery white like the moon.
Powers and Abilities
•My Own Moon gives the user somewhere to go for a minute of peace and quiet. A safe place in a dangerous world.
Stats:
Destructive Power: N/A
Speed: C
Range: A (ca. 1km)
Durability: E
Precision: B
Development Potential: C
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Get it? Get it?
Sorry, for the delay, I really wanted to have the chapter out yesterday, but I got… distracted. On the plus side, that mud cake was delicious.
Speaking of delays… you may have to expect more. See, I've spent the last two months or so, ah… without a job. That has been remedied now, which is good, cause money. It's kinda important to have.
Buuuuuuut…. if you'll remember there was a, um… a drop in productivity on this project around the time I got my job.
Yeah.
It was my first job, and I was giving it my all. Which was good, because they want me back now… but it was also bad because I used up all my energy, so I couldn't get any writing done. And when I didn't get any writing done, it made me feel bad, and then it was even harder to write… you get the picture.
Hopefully, being a bit more self-aware, I'll be able to better balance work life and writing… but still, heads up. There may be a longer wait between chapters following this one.
So until we meet next time… take care of the planet Earth and remember that anything can happen in space.
