Mikitaka walks down the street, merging into the crowd as he looks around. He and Toyohiro had split up. Toyohiro had said that it was to raise the chances of them finding the 'Stand User' that supposedly caused him to end up here, but Mikitaka thinks it's also so that he can have some time to himself. Mikitaka didn't mind. He could guess how overwhelming it would be to suddenly find yourself in a world much different than your own.
He glances around at the people that pass him. He is trying to see if anyone is acting out of the ordinary or if there are any unfamiliar faces, but mostly he is just passing the time until he and Toyohiro meet up again. He hopes nothing too exciting will happen-- he doesn't want to keep Toyohiro waiting. If he does find the Stand User, he thinks it would be unwise to confront him alone; after all, if he was powerful enough to drag Toyohiro here, then what chance did Mikitaka have against him?
He ends up paying less and less attention to the people around him, playing out various worst-case-scenarios in his head. It's really only a matter of time before he collides with someone, but he'll be fine.
“Toyohiro?” Mikitaka tilts his head. “What’s that you’ve got in your hand?”
Toyohiro starts. “Oh, uh-- Miki," he says, "Yeah, I'm just-- y'know. Aren't you supposed to be cleaning that glass?"
"It's clean." Mikitaka rests his arms on the bar and leans on them, trying to get a better look. Toyohiro hadn't actually answered his question. "It glows? Cool! Did you buy something from the market the other day?"
Yikes. Oh no. Toyohiro twists his hands, keeping his phone out of sight. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I got one of those... Glow in the dark rocks."
Mikitaka frowns at him. "It's twelve noon."
"It's... Shady. In my arms."
He keeps his smile up, shaky as it is, but his left eye twitches as soon as the words leave his mouth. That sure sounded convincing, good job, he’s absolutely not got this in the bag.
Mikitaka seems to accept this, though, and picks up another glass. Toyohiro doesn't pay attention to what he's doing with it, slouching badly enough in his seat that for a moment he fears that his bones liquefied. He checks his phone. Is this some sort of Stand attack? He doesn't understand what's going on. He'd gone through yesterday thinking it was just some weird dream, but now...
He checks his service again. Still nothing. Toyohiro seems to be alone here. Small and cramped... tavern, he thinks they’re called? But there are beds... Everything’s all weird, and he’s unsettled by the fact that Mikitaka seems normal, and that in itself is weird, and. It’s just disturbing in general.
Life in Morioh probably shouldv’e prepared him for any bizarre things being flung right at him, but this is on a whole other level.
He’s thankful that being dense (gullible, overly trusting) seems to be a constant with Mikitaka, but if his memory isn’t, and Toyohiro can’t figure out what’s going on--
“By the way, Toyohiro, don’t think I don’t hear you tapping.”
"I still think that if you had tried you would have been able to fix it."
The not-a-wizard Toyohiro rolls his eyes. "Do you want me to break your entire house down?" he says. "I don't think alternate me would appreciate that. I sure as hell wouldn't."
"Still!" Mikitaka pulls Toyohiro's 'cell phone' out of his pants pocket, tapping on the screen with his index finger. He frowns, then continues: "Besides that, we managed to handle the customer just fine."
Toyohiro groans. Mikitaka ignores his anguish in favour of celebrating the fact that he'd managed to turn the phone on. "Don't remind me," says Toyohiro. "How do you even know how to mix a whiskey sour? You look like you're barely fifteen."
That grabs Mikitaka's attention. His head shoots up and he gapes at Toyohiro, hurt. "You said I looked older than I was!"
"I didn't. Other me probably needs glasses, though."
"You just haven't seen what the other people here look like." Mikitaka pockets the phone as an idea occurs to him. "That's it! We can go out to the town. I can both show you I'm right and your other self is too, and you can look for that Stand thing you mentioned!"
"Stand User, not a Stand."
"I still don't understand it much," says Mikitaka. As he moves around the bar and takes their coats, he hears Toyohiro stand up from his seat. He shakes their coats to get the thin layer of dust off of them-- he's too lazy to go through their closets and pick out their usual ones. "Can you explain it to me again while we walk? I would like to learn more, it sounds interesting."
Toyohiro takes the coat from him when he offers it and shrugs it on. "Yeah, sure. And I noticed you never said how old you were."
"I'm sure that's not necessary," says Mikitaka. He kicks a stray splinter under a table on his way to the doors. "I'm the same age as your version of me."
"My version of you said he's over a thousand years old."
Mikitaka can practically hear his smug grin. He stops in his tracks and turns around, eyes wide. "No way."
"Yeah, he sent in a request for a birth certificate from his home planet. Apparently he'd lost the copy he'd brought with him, so he didn't have it on hand." Toyohiro pushes past him and the door open. He looks back at Mikitaka and grins at the look on his face.. "You as old as he is?"
"No way," says Mikitaka, still in shock. "I'm sixteen."
"So I was a year off."
"A year is a lot of time, Toyohiro." Mikitaka walks ahead of him, starting down the road. "We're heading to the market first, unless you have any other ideas. It'll be crowded at this hour."
Hello ! thsi is Mikitaka ! toyohiro said that he thinks it would be fine for me to post on the blog because i am tech nically the same person as the one who owns it !!!! this is all very exciting ,he sayys thateverything is weird here but i dont think it is not really.
In Toyohiro's expert opinion, there is no possible way he has lost his mind. This is, most likely, a Stand attack.
But fuck him if he knows where the user is.
At his third exaggerated sigh in the last minute, Mikitaka sighs as well. "What is it, Toyohiro? Is it the cell-phone that you have with you?" he pauses. He'd said cellphone with emphasis on the wrong syllable. Toyohiro swears it's on purpose. "Why are you waving it around?"
"Service," deapans Toyohiro. "Higher you raise it the better it'll be. I got a bar an hour ago and I've been trying to get it back."
"I do not know what you mean," Mikitaka says, cheerfully. "No clue. At all."
"That's okay. You don't have to."
"But I want to, though." Mikitaka makes his way over to the table Toyohiro is sitting at, settling down across from him. He looks at Toyohiro expectantly. "You said you weren't supposed to be here? I would like to help."
Toyohiro raises a brow. "Earlier you were eyeing my phone like a dog would steak, Miki. You sure it's not also 'cause you wanna sneak a look at it?"
"That too." Yeah, of course. Mikitaka's boundless curiosity is a universal constant.
"Whatever," Toyohiro says, rolling his eyes. He hands the phone over to Mikitaka without ceremony. The other boy takes it with barely restrained glee on his face, immediately turning it over and examining it. "Go wild. 's not like you can do much to it, anyway."
They spend the next twenty minutes going over Toyohiro’s situation and his phone. He shares bits and pieces of his life in Morioh with the human version of Mikitaka whenever he comes across something that reminds him. Mikitaka looks through the Date and Time settings, and Toyohiro mentions how his version had talked at length about how fascinating it was, to see the different ways time could be perceived by different civilizations.
"So other me is an alien?" asks Mikitaka, sounding only halfway interested in the conversation. He's moved on from Date and Time to About Phone.
"Yeah," says Toyohiro, distractedly. He’s monitoring what Mikitaka does to make sure he doesn’t accidentally wipe his SD card or something equally catastrophic. "There's speculation about whether or not you might actually be some batsh-- some... weird Stand user, but alien's the most accepted, especially since you're so adamant about it." And also because you’ve got a fucking spaceship.
"A Stand user? What's that mean? Can people in your universe not usually stand?"
A good ten minutes is dedicated to explaining what Stand users are. A lot of it seems to go over his head, but when Toyohiro gets to explaining Superfly, he perks up.
"Oh," he says, eyes bright, "My version of you can do something like that, too! He studies magic!"
"Magic," parrots Toyohiro. He tries to imagine himself studying magic and can't go any farther than comically large circular glasses and an oversized purple cloak. "Magic?"
Wait, no, that's not the right question. Hastily, he adds, "He can do something like my Stand ability?"
"Yeah," Mikitaka nods, "He's a big part of renovating the house, when we do! He can do all sorts of things with it."
God, fuck, all Toyohiro can think of is Howl's Moving Castle when Mikitaka says that. "He can--"
"I kinda want to see if you can do it too, actually!" Mikitaka leans forward, setting the phone down in the table between them. His grin is wide and eager. "Can you try? It'd be cool if you could."
"Uh?" Toyohiro usually finds it hard to say no to Mikitaka, since the alien can remind him of an actual child sometimes, and also he can be terrifying if he wanted to. The very concept of his existence is terrifying. But anyway, Toyohiro usually finds it hard to say no to Mikitaka, and it seems that his alternate human self is no exception. In fact, it seems even harder, since this version of him is a human-- barely an adult, at that. An actual child. "Okay, sure, I guess."
Mikitaka clasps his hands together and brings them close to his chest, a stream of thanks pouring from his mouth. Toyohiro snorts and tells him to shut up and let him concentrate, and he does just that, watching intently.
Toyohiro glares at the ceiling with effort. He's trying, but he's not so sure if he'll have... any sort of connection, at all, to this place, and--
A beam slowly detaches from the ceiling. His eyes go wide. It falls straight down in front of him. In slow-motion, it breaks the table. He shouts, not screams, no matter what anyone says, scrabling backwards in his seat and burrowing into it to try to avoid the splinters. Mikitaka, for his part, stays in the same place, grin frozen but eyes fixed on the beam.
"Shit," says Toyohiro. He flounders, frantically trying to regain his bearings. Well, that was a disaster. "I'm sorry--"
"Woah," says Mikitaka, finally moving to clap, of all things, "You're exactly like he was when he started trying it out! That's... Well, it's hilarious, actually, but I think it's nice."
"Nice?" asks Toyohiro, incredulously, "Nice? Your table is broken."
Mikitaka waves his hand. "It's fine," he says. "It's not like a customer is going to--"
"Do not say that, things always go wrong right after someone says something like that--"
“It's true, though, I'm right--"
The doors open. Toyohiro can't decide whether he should glare at Mikitaka or glare at the doors.
