This was his first time using mortal transport, and he had come to dislike it already.
They had been moving for over thirty minutes if he had his timing right—which was slow by his account. However, he had decided to humor them, and all through the trip, he had sat quietly with his eyes closed.
He easily ignored the nervous conversation that was going on between the boy who had picked him up and his jittery partner in the passenger seat beside him.
He could understand their words. Another curiosity he had picked up in the past few minutes. That should've been impossible. For a single language to share the same words, structure, and sentences even with different origins. There should've been a language drift.
So not just an Outsider's plane. Another plane parallel to his?
Putting the conversation to the side, he focused on sensing the innate reishi of this plane of existence he had found himself in. It was in a neutral state of being, which should've been impossible.
Pure and whole.
This was not a world that had suffered a war so devastating and a threat to the fabric of existence that the five families had to devise a treacherous plan using the Soul King to break it up.
What did that mean for this world? The absence of any true regulation? Any true threat? What did that mean for him?
Why was he here? What would his intrusion on this plane cause? Even now, he could feel the way his reiatsu changed things. Never truly dispersing and seeming to sink into the fabric of this reality. Maybe—
The sound and bustling of the city finally interrupted his concentration. With a soft frown, he opened his eyes slightly and glanced outside the window. They had finally gotten past the outskirts and into the city itself.
"Where are we?" he asked softly as his eyes picked up the different ethnicities around, while his uncanny hearing picked up on the different languages spoken by the different people they passed by.
"This is Brockton Bay, Jiji. I assume this is where you were heading to, yes?" The kid replied with a quick hushing motion at his partner.
"And where is Brockton Bay?"
The question caused the kid to glance at him from the overhead mirror before facing the incoming traffic once more, ignoring the exaggerated motions from his partner.
"It's in East Coast America, Jiji. Are you alright? Do you have anywhere I can drop you or anywhere to go?" the kid asked with concern lacing his tone.
The sheer thought of it almost forced him to scoff, but he strangled the thought and gave it a thought. He was lost, wasn't he?
"I told you we should've just left him behind, Jin. I don't feel like carrying a senile man around while looking for whoever lost him," the other kid called out with a laugh.
"Shut the hell up, Uta. He's an elder and would be treated as such. If you don't want to help, then I can drop you at the next stop," the kid replied to his partner with a glare and a harsh tone.
They had switched languages, he realized with a gentle tug of his beard. English was an amusing language to a creature like him. A language cobbled together from multiple sources and had somehow found its way into becoming the most prominent language in recent centuries.
To a man like him who witnessed countless human empires rise and fall, it was amusing. He had forgotten more languages than historians even knew existed. And they thought he wouldn't understand them; he was almost amused.
Yet the other whelp spoke words that no one had dared level at him, with a tone packed with more disrespect than he had borne witness to in a millennium.
A younger him would have cut the brat down heedless of anything for the sheer effrontery.
Yet he was an old man, wasn't he? They did not know Genryusai Yamamoto, did they? They did not know what the symbol at the back of his white haori meant or what the black shihakuso he wore represented. He had no legend here; in this new world, he was just an old man with a cane.
Even with that, there was a limit to his benevolence and understanding, one the child was keen on testing.
"Come on, man, we can drop him with the cops and—"
"I'm not kidding, Uta. I don't blame you because you didn't grow up back in Japan, but you do not disrespect your fucking elders. It doesn't matter if they're going senile. If they request to be taken to a fucking cinema, you take them there."
The kid punctuated the last half of his sentences with a poke at his partner's chest after every single word.
Yamamoto admired the sheer dexterity and multitasking ability it took to scold and drive at the same time.
"What do you say, Jiji? How about I drop my friend off, and I take you to Granny Sachiko. I'm sure she will know what to do and can get you settled, especially if you're new in town," the kid turned away from his partner to address him from the front seat in Japanese with a smile and a quick change of tone.
He raised a brow. You wouldn't have known the kid was cursing out his friend a few seconds ago judging by how he was speaking now.
"Thank you," he nodded his acceptance and turned once more to stare out of the window the moment he felt a distortion in the wind.
He raised half-lidded eyes, filtering and ignoring the harsh glare of the sun, and picked up the form of a girl flying mid-air.
A blonde-haired girl that blew past them with two struggling men in her arms and at speeds faster than the car they were moving in.
This truly wasn't the human world was it, he observed as pedestrians barely gave the scene a glance before continuing on their way, indicating they could see with perfect clarity what was going on.
This must be a common enough occurrence to barely draw any real attention.
First a bridge made of light and energy across the ocean, now a teenage girl carrying men above her weight class and flying faster than a car. It seemed like this world wouldn't lack for amusement and entertainment at least.
"Come on, man, I didn't mean it like that. The old man is weird, as hell; check out the scar on his head and arm, and what's with the traditional—"
The kid reached out to shut the passenger door in his friend's face and sped off, leaving the disrespectful whelp behind.
He shot Yamamoto a glance before replying to his seemingly inquisitive stare, "Ah, don't mind him; he was simply complementing your white overcoat."
Yamamoto replied with a single nod before tearing his eyes away and noting the new district they had driven into.
Some of the younger men were dressed in variations of black, red, and green. His keen eyes spotted them even though they remained half-lidded.
A kid with barely any hair on his soft jaw wearing a red bandana across his head stared down another with a green jacket and hands gripping something in its pockets. It had the scent of a rivalry. Three colors for three different groups then.
Recognition patterns picked up the increase in such color-wearing teens the more they drove; some stayed huddled in the darker corners and alleyways, eyeing them with flinty eyes as they drove past.
This part of the city seemed to majorly host Asians instead of the more diverse population he saw when they originally got into town; it was enough to let him know the geopolitical landscape of this city must be a convoluted mess, he mused.
The car finally came to a stop at a run-down part of the town close to the sea, the building ahead was faded with paint peeling off it, with well-worn stairs that led to the door, yet it had the feeling of a home well taken care of.
Children ran about chasing each other, all of them with ranging features and ages but notably sharing the same characteristics. Segregation then.
Reddish black eyes looked at it all with eyes that had seen war. A single door, weathered and yet a very solid and strong defensible structure.
He stepped out of the car and looked at the unfamiliar building in front of him.
"Might be a bit rough, but we don't have to worry much here, we're at the edge of the docks, so most gangs won't bother troubling us much." The kid said defensively, mistaking his appraisal for judgment, so he ignored him and closed his eyes.
What was he even doing here, accepting help from humans, had he truly let Yhwach's words get to him, so much so that he instinctively sought to prove the man wrong?
"Huh, These slanty-eyed fucks are bringing in more of their kind to mess up the city even more."
Even with his eyes closed and deep in thought, he had picked up the four men with shaved heads walking up to them, his keen senses picked up the taste of alcohol on their breath, the slur of their voices, and their overly aggressive posture and bearings.
This would be a distraction from his thoughts at least, he mused as he turned to face what seemed to be one of the gangs the boy talked about.
"H- hey man, this is not your territory anymore. Not since the green dragon triad pushed you out of the docks."
The boy- Jin, called out with false bravado, as he rounded about to face the four men. Yamamoto picked up on the way the kids that had been playing around seconds ago had gone silent, gathering up into a block together like sheep bunching up at the first scent of a wolf.
"Huh, is the slanty-eyed fuck actually talking to me?" The lead skinhead asked rhetorically as he walked ahead of his pack.
"Put him in his place!" Came the jeers from the remaining three as they laughed at the way the boy seemed to shake with every statement.
"Okay man, we don't want trouble we just—"
SMACK
The boy was silenced, and this time, Yamamoto was forced to frown, before opening his eyes partway.
The boy was on the floor moaning in pain as blood dripped out of his broken nose, while his assailant remained in a boxer pose, even while drunk and inebriated, the man was trained and stuck to that, Yamamoto would give him that.
With his eyes opened, he picked up on their mode of dressings; they wore black colors, with chains and full beards. Yet the thing that drew his attention the most was the tattoos branded on visible parts of their bodies. They seemed familiar even if he could not place them.
"I was just—"
"Shut the fuck up, you chink!" The lead gangster cut the boy short once more with a solid kick to the diaphragm that sent him rolling to Yamamoto's feet.
His frown deepened.
He was not one to intervene in the conflict of mortals, he was made and forged for a greater conflict than a squabble between mundane men, yet something about the men rubbed him sore.
Was it the words or the way they held themselves? Was it the tattoos bearing annoyingly familiar insignias on their bodies? He was not sure.
What he did know was that his benefactor was getting attacked and ignoring the scene was enough to breed bad karma.
He felt his frown ease as he finally came to a decision.