Description: One short ride to the YFCC after their encounter with the mysterious and powerful Magaki over some matters of the Gaia Tournament, Jiro Kasagi and Howard Rust both take moments to gather themselves as work is about to begin on making sure the air inside the YFCC can stay filtered and clean while the air is choked with volcanic ash outside. Enter the curious character, Jira Kasagi, who has a number of things to say about one of the men here... and what year is it, really?
The Young Fighters Community Center has underwent a bit of strife since the start of the natural disasters. However, it turned out that those disasters may not have been natural at all. Besides the dubious phenomenon, it does spell out a real apocalyptic situation.
The children were stranded. They were scared and there was nowhere for them to go. However, with the arrival of Jiro and Rust, it brought some sort of relief. It was the matter of getting the children set up with filters so that they don't suffer from the ashes polluting the air.
It is a bit of a peaceful time now and Jiro is left lying against the wall. Sweat running down his face, he is drinking a bottle of water. Set against his side is a small doberman who is learning against the young man. Gently petting the hound, the Stray Dog looks more calm than he did earlier.
Howard really couldn't wait to get out of all that ash and grime. There is a fairly frequent backdrop of him coughing for every time he goes out to his truck to grab those extra parts and filters for the air purifiers they have set up here. Hack, cough, wheeze. It has no longer become allergy season for him.
It is now something akin to a 24-hour allergy marathon, except instead of allergens, it is deeply unclean, dust-filled air. For this final challenge of fortitude to pull the stuff in, he visibly limps right back through the front door.
"Shut it. Shut it. Shut it," he mutters aloud to those nearby he forbade from going outside themselves, "g-got it all in--"
Cough! At long last, there's something of a break from that wheezing as he gently places the last of the load down, hands on his knees as he takes in a breath. If anything, he's at least fortunate he can still walk after that particularly savage impact his legs absorbed. For, uh, a given value of walking...
"Okay. Okay." He holds out a hand to those gathered as he leans against a wall. "The, the two of us there... guy with the dog," did he seriously forget Jiro's name in the last ten or so minutes he's known it, "we... we had a, a bit of a run-in with... with someone on the, the way," he clears his throat, patting at it with his fist, "'scuse me. Far as... far as I know, so far... lot of the, the filters you guys got, still good, but... I, I dunno what the, uh, the evacuation plans are yet."
Granted, the people here who are actually in charge are probably on top of that. He's just someone's friend who comes by every so often to help, such as... this particular, extreme, world-shaking instance.
"So, uh... 'nother... 'nother minute, then I'll... get to work." He coughs again.
Ah yes, the wonderful YFCC, the place Alma had brought Jira to in hopes of avoiding danger in the forest. She'd since made a new friend and retrieved her backpack from home. She's driven up to the centre this time around, in that sparkly white limousine (not stretched) that her room security chauffeured her in and out of Yokohama with.
Jira steps out, now in a situationally appropriate state of dress and a friendly smile to the driver, signalling them to blaze off like a madman to wherever next while she marches into the youth center- with her usual summer clothes and her backpack. Strangely enough, the ash and soot filling the air seem to innocently blow away from her immediate person, almost in such a way that the undesired pollutants are being brushed aside by an unseen hand and sweeping before her feet a path. There's that and her shining, glistening gun that shares a luminous presence equal to her eyes.
"Alright everyone, I'm back!" she calls out in her usual, soft voice while those eyes look over everyone.. a certain man's toupee gives her an odd deja vu that nags at her subconscious. Such is ignored as she walks in and observes a dog and happily shuffles over to that doberman. The woman crouches down before them and locks eyes with the canine, oblivious to the one that does not belong.
Good.
Looks like Rust has everything under control with the workers. Jiro is content with keeping away from everyone and petting the dog instead.
The young man does look uneasy when one of the children approach him. He has half a mind to heckle up at the sight of the young boy. Jiro's eyes narrow slightly, but the dog actually calms the boy down. So instead, Jiro relaxes and looks over the area. He surveys his surroundings to get the feel of the staff, the children, and other current inhabitants.
The person closing in on his stray doberman, however, gets a lookover. That lookover turns into a glare and a growl stirs from him. "I recommend stepping the hell back." The dog starts reacting in the same way as Jiro, now growling at the lady.
The aging man turns his head over to Jira's surprisingly cheerful display as she lets herself in. A part of him subconsciously wonders, somehow, if his journey in and hers were of entirely different environs. He had a gas mask on at first for a reason out there - one that's now been unceremoniously destroyed. Granted... the guy he picked up seems to be doing largely okay.
Taking in a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm those lungs of his, Mr. Rust winces a bit as he slides down against the wall. His legs still give him a little grief about... bending... supporting his weight... existing. One knee in particular suddenly gets a bit of a twinge, for no good reason. (Do his knees ever need a reason? Howard has given them plenty over the years. They can be forgiven for doing it on their own accord just the once... right?)
When he looks in her direction again, he squints at the sight of that gun. He raises a finger, a pointing finger, shaking it every so often.
"Uh, hey, are you... you with the police?" He asks of Jira as he stands back up with a hiss and a grimace. "There... there were three different guys who k-kept... jumping on my car hood on the way here, I--"
His babbling is cut off by coughs, almost conveniently as language and emotions grow a bit tense over there between a young man, his canine friend, and this mysterious new young lady who has come by.
The woman frowns at the canine, growling at her has her giving serious grumpface. She turns to look at Howard as he speaks, then befalls a fit of lung problems and her entire body absolutely freezes when her eyes cross over that phantom of a boy. Her left leg suddenly pulls out from underneath her crouching form and kicks outwards in the air before she's pulled back a handful of meters back away from him- and the dog like a puppet being reeled in from a single string.
She is totally silent and unresponsive until her legs drop, broken by four words. "Just like the photograph..." she murmurs rather in a fashion out of context. She doesn't complain about her current position of flat on the floor until that sense of disbelief is suspended and she slowly slides around into sitting with her legs folded, eyes teary.
"What are you doing here, y-you can't just.. break the rules like that." she says, with those glowing eyes staring at the Stray with equal bits of frustration and grief.
"Old man, what the hell about this lady gives off that she is with the police?!"
Jiro gives a glare at his way, then he looks back at the older woman to give her a more incredelous look. He observe her a little more; he can see the backpack and the heavy set of clothes that she wears. He squints at her with that wary gaze.
That dog maintains that growling posture.
However, Jiro tenses the moment that the girl suddenly springs back. "...What the hell is wrong with you?" And then, he blinks as she looks at him with a teary look. "Hey-hey! What are you talking about..? What is this 'breaking the rules?'"
Finally, Jiro's frustrations is getting the better of him. His eyes snap towards Rust as he stands to his feet. He is about crossed and annoyed with his whole situation.
"Old man, you said something about an event back in 2009. I want answers regarding that. As far as I am concern, this is 2007."
Pause.
"Right?"
"She has a gun," Howard answers simply as he leans against the wall with his left hand resting against it. Almost deadpan, really, as though he were the one telling things as opposed to the one stammering about for clarification on something from someone else.
"A-and, uh, look, ma'am, uhh," Howard's voice trails off, as though... dumbfounded? A misconception, he thinks, of the young girl accosting Jiro over the incidents he just described? "I, I don't mean him, uh... he... he didn't do anything wrong, I just picked him up on the way, he was," he stops. What was he doing, come to think of it?
Before he can think to ask, Jiro asks him a question as he rises to his feet in clear irritation - one that sees Rust's shoulders slump as though incredulous. Doubting. Maybe even surprised that Jiro is able to snap up to a stand as though seemingly ready to slug someone so soon after an encounter with... whoever that guy was.
His right hand goes up against the side of his head, fingers scratching as if wondering-- no, he's not going senile. He shakes his head, as he returns to making eye contact with the young man all the way over there.
"'s 2014." He lets it hang at that, as he seems entirely uncertain as how to better put it than that.
Jira huffs in an aggitated manner and sniffs, staving off actual tears. Comically enough, over her tiny whimpering and focus on Jiro, she doesn't register much of Howard at the moment. But, after inward reflection she sighs.. maybe things were about to go horribly wrong, the end of days.
"Why does our family have to be so stubborn." she murmurs. "The Kasagi family really knows how to break the mould." and picks up her head, turning to Rust.
"No, I'm not a police officer, but he did break rules... natural rules. It's not fair, not at ALL." she says, cursing at some unseen presence. "Why did it take so long.." her eyes drop back down to the floor.
A glance towards that gun was noted. "...Don't some fighters have guns outside of the police?" He gives a thoughtful look. He furrows his eyebrows, then he considers about the situation a little more.
However, the focus is now back on Rust as he awaits explanation. He ended up in the middle of nowhere, worn and beaten. He is not sure what to make of the situation, truth be told. This is nothing like before.
"...I don't even remember this place existing. There is no way this place could be build in three hours. I know the streets!" His eyes snap towards Rust, "I know the streets of Southtown better than /anyone/. Every nook and cranny. There is not a piece of construction that escapes my eyes--...."
And the news is broken to him.
'2014'.
Jiro stares at Howard with a dumbfounded look on his face.
And then he breaks out laughing.
"Hahahahahahahahaa! Oh my god! You almost had me for a second there. You mean that I am seven years in the future?! Next, you're going to tell me that Livejournal is dead!" He continues to laugh until he overhears something important.
"Wait. There's another Kasagi?"
Jiro shifts his head at Jira, squinting his eyes. "...You are a Kasagi? ...Are you a sister that I never knew about?" He considers, "...Or cousin? This is important. Need to figure this out."
Jiro is honestly perplexed. He doesn't know what he is doing. However, his hand gently rests on the older girl's head.
Howard cringes at mention that Jira's not a cop - then in this country with its gun control laws, why does she have a... well, it's tough out there, natural disasters going on and all. Maybe that's a subject best not pressed right at the moment.
Little (big) things like that are easy to sweep aside in the wake of Jiro's defiant debunking of just about everything that seems wrong to the young man. A place built in three hours? Laughing that it's 2014.
"Uhh, y'know, that... that kinda is funny," Howard chortles, "we shoulda had... flyin' cars by now. But, uh," he looks down, continuing to rub his head even as the young girl drops cryptic statements about 'natural rules,' or something about 'stubborn' or 'breaking the mould,' or... what the hell is she getting upset about?
What is this guy's problem?
The American man physically, mentally, and spiritually shrugs about it all, bringing that hand rubbing his head to his forehead, shaking it.... and speaks up again, waving a finger as he pushes away from the wall.
"Look. Look. Look." He tries to grab hold of the flow of the conversation, holding both hands up, palms pointed outward. "'s a mess out there right now, okay? I mean... Fuji erupts... some... nasty storms, and," he coughs, "can't breathe a, a god damn breath out there."
He strikes his chest a few times with a fist.
"Let's just, let's just all... go over grade school math later, we g--"
Jira sniffles and takes the hand on her head into both of hers, staring up into her older/younger relative in the eyes.
"I'm your cousin, Jira Kasagi. Yoko's branch of the family and mine don't have much connection, but we do have a few pictures of you three from various ages.. that's the only reason I recognized you." she replies. "You.. haven't been alive, -here- for a while. Now you're out of time, out of place when things have started to look grim." and with that her expression remains sad, frowning. "I'm really torn on how I should feel about this, you're just stubborn."
"...Heh." Jiro is rubbing his forehead, then he looks over at Rust the moment he starts speaking about Fuji's eruption once more. "Is that why we are under the situation that are are in right now?" Jiro looks very uneasy about the situation now.
"... Old man, do you think this has anything to do with that Gaia Tournament that the guy was going on about?" He furrows his eyebrows, "Nothing about him was human." He closes his eyes, "The way that he moved was strange. It was not like Dhalsim, who tends to stretch himself. There was something definitely inhuman about the way that this guy did it."
"I also saw pink goo come out of him. I was able to see a lot when my senses were heightened." He closes his eyes, looking rather... preturbed.
However, he looks over towards Jira a moment later.
His frown eases a bit to a faint smile as he looks at his sniffling cousin. "Hrm..." A hand gently rests along her head. His eyes reflect upon her own eyes, "Out of time.. Out of place...?" His eyes start to furrow, looking at Rust, "...Am I really out of my own time?"
Her words finally hit him.
"Wait, not alive?"
The dog's head perks up at Jiro's senses. It spikes and it looks agitated. Jiro looks like he was hit with a bullet and the dog immediately leans over his arm to keep him propped. "... I don't get it."
One moment, he was racing against Xiangfei to deliver pizza. Next moment, he found himself in a world that was an impending sign of apocalypse. However, to find that he is displaced from time and that he died?
"Whoa! Whoa. Whoa." Howard speaks up. One of those 'whoas' isn't a whoa, it's actually a cough that the person in charge of doing subtitles for the hearing impaired has just decided is a cough. Moving on.
"Let's... calm down. C-calm down." He lowers his hands downward as Jira expresses grief and - to his meager understanding of the real situation - complete nonsense.
"We can, just... let's... worry about that guy," his face goes sour at mention of pink goo, how little of the guy was human - sure, inhumanly powerful, he's felt that punch to his face, that slam to his knees, watching them contort and twist Jiro's visually impressive chi manifestations against him (and felt the sting of it), but...
Howard steps to the side of Jiro where the dog doesn't reside, hand against the wall for support as his legs nearly dump him again. He grunts aloud, exhaling even more loudly, and starts to speak once more.
"I, I, I've seen a lot of shit," he concedes, and boy would they be here a while if one were to list the examples of crazy world-changing phenomena and other such dire situations he's been cast in, "let's not... get, get all crazy, okay, now's the... the worst time to be all... all science fiction, and, and, uh..."
Suddenly, he snaps his fingers, as though he didn't need to mull over the seven year gap or the crazy possibility that someone who is being proclaimed dead (...or something? He's still not clear, but he never did know Jiro personally), straightening out as he looks back up.
"I, I think I know how we can... work this out." He clears his throat. "Ahh... Jiro, right? Jiro. You said, uh, you know... Southtown, front to back, right?"
He looks out to the crowd that has no doubt gathered over the commotion. Some of them probably know exactly who or what they're looking at - Jiro's name was not obscure. The imagery of the Stray Dog of Southtown is not exactly a thing of great secrecy - if anything, it's more another case of one Howard Rust not getting the immediate hint.
"It's... it's dangerous to go out now, I mean, we both... y'know, that guy," he doesn't need to illustrate how worked over the two of them got by that strange man who jumped on the hood of his truck to challenge them to a fight, as Howard does some weird gestures with his hands as if to illustrate this, "but..."
Howard holds up a finger. "Gimme... gimme some names of people th-that you, uh, that you know," he says as he looks out to the rest, then back to Jiro and Jira alike, "maybe... maybe they can, uh, sort this out."
Considering how long he's been around Southtown, odds are pretty good that the two of them might know at least ONE person together... possibly.
She idly listens about this sounding abomination of a man, then takes a tight grip of his hands and stands up before Jiro. Listening to Howard's words and nodding in agreement, there is no need to worry immediately about the Kasagi family defying nature further.
"It cannot be helped." she says, eyeing Jiro carefully. "Have you met a man named Alma yet, Jiro?" she asks him, still gripping his hands tightly and seeming hopeful. "I only met him recently, but it seems our family name opens up a lot of doors." she adds. Her grip is steady, and she shows no signal of being ready to release his hands with a weak, polite smile.
Lowering his head, Jiro's eyes remain closed as he tries to process his situation. However, when Rust focuses on them worrying about the guy, Jiro looks back at Rust. "... Right, yeah." He narrows his eyes, "What I am wondering is what does the guy have to do with the ongoing crisis. I have a feeling that the man is involved somehow. He seemed to have a lot of contempt for us and he kept talking about this Gaia Tournament."
"Dangerous or not, I am going to go out..." Jiro looks annoyed, "I need to process everything that is going on here. I cannot learn the streets staying here while this crap is going on by." He furrows his eyebrows at Rust.
As for Rust's suggestion, "Sure, Acacia, Daigo, Sakura, Hotaru, Al----"
And Jira asks him about knowing 'Alma'. "...Alma and I fought before I went to deliver the pizza and had my competition with a certain Chinese girl with a giant forehead." He grumbles. Damn Xiangfei.
However, Jiro pauses as she squeezes his hand. A faint smile grows and he looks at his 'older' cousin. He softens a bit. It is slow, but Jiro is calming down from his initial rage. To see a young girl so worried for him and holding onto his hand, Jiro reciprocates the hold and he listens carefully.
"...However, since my arrival here, no. I met this old man here.." He jabs a thumb at Rust, "And then the tournament organizer who is very much not human."
Putting aside the demand that he's going back out there to risk getting all that crap in his lungs, Howard tries to process the names as they come. Acacia... don't know, Daigo... does he mean the Gedo delinquent head honcho? Sakura... now, where did he hear that name? Hotaru... that one should ring a bell, he knows he's heard it, but there's no definitive hits. Frustration creeps up on his face, up until...
"Alma Towazu?" Howard speaks the full name out loud as Jiro narrates about how an Alma and himself fought before... he frown, although he's actually content that this as close of a lead as the three of them are probably going to have.
"First," he speaks up over Jiro as he discusses the tournament organizer, "you're... you're not goin' back out there until you rest up, and... and neither am I," he grouses, looking out towards the greater youth center, away from the two of them, "I got... work to do here." He coughs again. What he wouldn't do to have just a single room free of dust, only oxygen - and lots of it - to breathe in deep.
"If... if the Alma you two're talkin' 'bout are the same... we're... we're not gonna have to look far." He might actually be in this very building right now, maybe, possibly. "'m gonna start askin' 'round... right now," despite the fact he's limping and probably shouldn't be walking more than necessary.
"HEY!" He calls out to passers-by, holding a hand up. "We need... is, is Towazu here? Hey. Is he here?" His voice breaks up every so often as the dryness of his throat and stress of his lungs conspire against his ability to shout.
...For being the man that is famous for having been the last man standing in two decisive battles against Vega, he sure doesn't look quite the picture of health, or sturdiness, but here we are...
The woman nods, Alma's the word. Jira listens... don't most chinese girls have big foreheads? The mention of pizza and her mouth looks a little watery.
"Yes, Towazu-san, him. And, I will agree with this formidable gentleman here, I don't think either of you are in any shape to head out there again without some kind of protection. W-wait, stranger-san." she calls to Howard, nervously squeezing at Jiro's hands. "I think my friend can help you clear out your chest and recover.. if you'll let us." she offers, eyes still a bit watery and trying her best to keep them from spilling over.
"It wouldn't take long."
A guttral growl stirs from Jiro as his eyes light up at Rust. That feral side of the young man begins to take over as his normal eyes generate to a more bestial state; the cool blue eyes become slits as he grits his teeth. The look of annoyance draws at Rust.
"What the hell do you mean that I am not going anywhere?! I am in a place where I am unaware of my surroundings! I did not earn my title by not knowing my surroundings!" His attention fals over at Jira, "...Meh."
He exhales a sigh.
Jiro just falls back to his butt, looking back with an exasperated look.
"...Still tired from that fight." He cannot help but to think back at so much that has happened. The man's words regarding his chi's origins, the year that he is in, the fact that he died. There is a lot to process.
"...Heh. Guess I'm not in Kansas anymore."
Log created on 20:00:38 08/19/2014 by Rust, and last modified on 22:54:27 08/19/2014.