comelately | IC INBOX (AION TELEIOS->KENOS)

[ yes, he recognizes this voice, which is startling by itself! ]

Wait - M-Misa?! You can talk to me through this thing?

[ even though he's THE ENEMY?! he'll answer her questions in a second........ he's too flabbergasted by this. should he hang up? is she going to triangulate his position through his shard or something?! she seemed nice, but the kenoma still murdered estinien... ]

Huh? Yeah, of course I can, dummy.

[ They're all Aions? She says this like it's completely obvious? And that's because Misa doesn't think so hard about what people she calls are the enemy and which ones aren't— it doesn't occur to her that some people might not want to talk to her. So, after a few seconds... ]

I mean, I guess you could keep me out if you wanted to, but you picked up, sooo... doesn't that mean you want to talk to me?

[ is that a feigned sense of disappointment in her voice? yes, yes it is ]

Aren't we on opposite sides of a war? This feels risky as hell...

[ there's a lot of uncertainty in his voice. can this be tracked? Is he giving away their hideout location? If it was that easy, though, surely someone would have done it before, right? This started before he got here. And while he has many failings, he wouldn't say "weak-willed" is one of them; it's probably not that he's particularly vulnerable, especially if he compares himself to some of the other Pleroma.

So maybe it really is just Misa wanting to chat. Which lines up with how she behaved when they met. Still - what a crazy thing to do. ]

I don't mind talking - you just surprised me. [ of course, going back to her original question also makes him a little uneasy, though for entirely different reasons. he decides to leave out the fact that he's a washed-up former celebrity. ] Uh... yeah, you could call me that. What's TV...?

Edited 2022-07-01 16:00 (UTC)

[ Does she recognize that she's putting him in an awkward position by calling him out of the blue, especially when the locations of many of the Pleroma are unknown? Maybe, but as usual, her personal want to just talk with him trumps what miniscule amount of consideration she might have had for his situation. As a result, his question about whether or not this is "risky as hell" goes completely ignored. And in contrast to his uncertainty, she just lets out an aggravated sigh over their communications. ]

Oh, not this again! You're not from some crazy time in the past, are you? Sometimes I'm the one who's behind, so I thought... [ A shorter, less annoyed sounding sigh. ] ...well, nevermind. How far away is 2004 to you?

2004?!

[ his breathless shock at the number probably answers some of her question before he can. ]

That's more than a hundred years in the future... It's the year 1890.

[ he cannot even begin to conceive of what 2004 might be like. Do they have flying trains?! Did people live on the moon?! He could ask this stuff, but he doesn't want Misa to think he's stupid (he's having some foresight, for once), so he keeps it to himself; still, his bewilderment and curiosity are easy enough to pick up on through communion. ]

[ Johnny will be able to feel her genuine sense of shock over the emotional connection between the two of them, even an audible gasp for dramatic effect. He might not be able to see her, but given the animated way she'd acted when they'd met in person will give him a hint as to just how over the top her reaction is about to be— ]

[ Because in just a few short seconds after that, she busts out laughing, the sound bright and mirthful and immature. Entertained, rather than mocking. ]

1890! So you're totally old!! We're only around the same age by total chance, then, huh? Lucky you, hee hee....

... How's that make me lucky, exactly?

[ this isn't how he thought this conversation would go... at all. But he can't even say she's wrong. He'd be, what, 124 years old by her time? That's not just old, that's "pile of bones in the ground" old. He'll be chumming it up with the Saint's corpse. His great-great-great-grandkids will be roaming around, doing whatever people do in 2004 - not riding horses, apparently... (and having four balls.) ]

Wait a minute. If you're from the future, then there's definitely no way the world's actually destroyed.

Edited 2022-07-06 05:26 (UTC)

Hmmm.... maybe?

[ Though she doesn't sound thoroughly convinced. As luck would have it, all the people she's met from Earth are relatively normal, so she's assumed they're all from the same "Earth"— the concept of there being multiple different Earths from different universes hasn't really dawned on her yet. She's really just assumed that the end of the world was experienced by them all simultaneously, or that they'd all gotten a glimpse at the end of all things. ]

All that stuff is way too complicated. I mean, it shouldn't even be possible for us to talk, [ The time difference, the language barrier, the magic effect of even communicating through shards - Horos and everything that's come along with it is all so bizarre she simply doesn't question much. ] So would it be so weird if we were all made to "feel" the same moment? Of everything being destroyed.

[ a pause, followed by a little sigh. ]

... Yeah... I guess that's right.

[ he can't deny that. He doesn't understand how any of this stuff works; he shouldn't be trying to apply the logic of the world as he knows it to something as inexplicable as what's happened to them. For a moment, though, it was nice to imagine he'd found something he could be sure of. ]

Well, anyway... What's the world like in 2004? Are people flying to work?

[ not long ago, he wouldn't have cared at all about the future. Now... well, he still doesn't care that much, but it no longer feels like something irrelevant to him. Imagining the next year doesn't fill him with dread anymore. Johnny has a future, with the corpse in his sights; he can't help being a little curious about the world ahead. ]

Pfft, no. But we have cars, and subway trains. There are other vehicles that can fly, but you only go on them if you wanna visit another country.

[ ... Did any of those exist in 1890? She doesn't know, because someone doesn't give a shit about boring stuff like history. Her amusement hasn't diminished despite the temporary dip in subject matter - a soft, happy thrum coming through the other line. ]

Horse racing still happens, though it gets broadcasted to everyone on the thing I said before— TVs. Like a radio, but with picture. It's like being able to watch stuff on a screen from far away, so you don't have to actually be there at the race in order to watch it. Make sense?

[ this is a lot of crazy information for him. Some things existed - radio, telephone, hot air balloons and trains - but certainly nothing like what she's describing. Flying to another country on a balloon would be suicide, for one thing - and a radio that can show pictures? ]

So... it's like a photograph, but it moves? And you can watch it from anywhere? Does it have sound and stuff? [ a beat. ] That's so cool...

Yeah, there's sound, too. Here, I'll show you.

[ She affirms that, honestly fascinated by his cluelessness. Huh. Talking with someone from the past is always something she could imagine, but could never know what it would really be like. In any case, she communions him a mental video of a television playing some commercial for lipstick, drawn from her memory. On closer inspection, the model in the commercial is Misa herself. ]

See? It's like that.

[ it's good that Ryunosuke did this before so he's not completely bewildered by having someone else's memories beamed into his head. Instead, he just "watches" in wonderment. And is forced to contend with the fact that Misa is kind of a babe. Why did she send him this specific kind of thought...? Her putting on makeup? The Johnny of two years ago would assume she was trying to flirt with him... Fortunately(?), current Johnny believes she's way out of his league, so the idea is summarily dismissed. ]

Uh... huh. [ thinking. ] ... What was that, exactly? That was you in some kinda advertisement, right? You must be sort of famous, too.

Oh, right! I never told you. I'm a model.

[ Thankfully, Misa thinks nothing of sending over something like that, as it's simply the first thing that came to her mind when she thought of TVs (which says something about her ego.) She's left to briefly wonder in what capacity models existed in the 1800s, before deciding it's probably best just try to elaborate. ]

You have magazines in the past, right? I appear in those a lot. And I was getting pretty famous before I woke up here. People were always recognizing me on the street... I bet it's the same for you.

Oh, yeah? I can see that. You look like a model.

[ magazines, not so much, but they do have catalogs and advertisements - and while those obviously don't have photographs in them (too expensive), they do have illustrations of the products, and someone has to pose for those. So Johnny understands, in spite of the massive time difference.

There's a sort of sour sense at her comment - like he doesn't really want to talk about this, but will do it anyway. ]

... Well, they used to. I stopped riding after my accident. I'm just a washed-up has-been now - definitely not the same as you.

[ frankly, he prefers it when people don't recognize him these days... ]

Well that kind of sucks, doesn't it?

[ Losing his fame, not being able to compete in the sport anymore - it's sort of... a big bummer, for lack of a better term. But she doesn't immediately go for pitying him or worrying about how he dealt with it— Johnny seems perfectly fine now, and seemed to be getting along perfectly fine when she saw him in the flesh, so she doesn't see a need. To her, he's obviously been able to adapt. There's a flighty casualness to her words, like they're simply talking about how unlucky it is that it happened to rain on the day he meant to go to an amusement park. ]

Do you miss being famous? I thought I would when I first got here, but actually, it kinda feels like things haven't changed here in Achamoth. The people here treat Aions like celebrities, you know.

[ and that response - casual, normal, as if it's just a thing that happened to him - is actually the best one she could give. He was prepared for the pity and for the I'm-so-sorrys to start coming, but they don't. She just acknowledges that it sucks. And she's right about that: it does suck. But the way everyone gave up on him afterwards was almost worse than the injury, and having someone continue talking to him like a normal person, as standard as it might seem, feels like a blessing. It might just be that she's an airhead and doesn't realize the gravity of what happened - he has a hard time telling how much of her behavior is an affectation - but, frankly, he doesn't care. ]

Yeah, it sucks, [ he responds, a wryness to his tone. the unease from before fades away at the edges. ] To be honest... I don't miss it. I kinda realized after the accident that people were only treating me nice because I was famous. Everyone just wanted things from me. I'm sure you get what I mean.

[ now, nobody wants anything to do with a loser like him, which is both a return to the status quo and also a separate and maybe worse problem. At least, he'd thought nobody wanted anything to do with him until he met Gyro. Now he's got a tiny shred of confidence that he can get better. Maybe. ]

Oh, yeah! Business type guys were always trying to get stuff from me...

[ Her phone number, her email address, dates, car rides alone with her... yuck. She laughs, sheepishly, honestly charmed to relate over something so normal seeming. Though she doesn't necessarily miss being famous as he does, she can understand on a personal level the shift in how others treat you once you become famous. ]

Thankfully, no one in Achamoth is like that. They can be pushy, but they don't really want stuff from us. [ Other than a chance to show their gratitude and worship towards the Kenoma.] And everyone in Venera seemed to scared of Aions, so I guess it's probably not a problem anywhere else, either....

[ there's a sympathetic twinge on his end at that - though, unfortunately, he suspects that businessmen probably wanted different things from her than they did him. (Most of the time.) ]

Yeah? I heard they treat you like kings in Achamoth. That's different from being a celebrity, though, I guess... [ hmm. ] Anyway, I bet it's nothing compared to wherever you come from, since you're from the future and all.

[ misa is used to sleeping in her SPACE BED presumably ]

I mean, I guess? But the Achamites are a lot more generous than an average fan.

[ Giving up free money, sometimes even offering Aions their lives or their service... it's kind of a lot. On the topic of how life in general is: ]

Actually, living in Achamoth is way, way fancier than how I lived in modern Japan. I'm sure my life wasn't that different from yours on Earth... [ yes it was but she just assumes since johnny is famous his life quality must have been about equal ] Though I'm not so good with history, so I can't even start to guess whether Horos is fancier than what you came from.

[ did they have toilets back then??? ]

[ YES HE HAD TOILETS MISA!! ]

I dunno, either. Never been.

[ obviously. Johnny hums. ]

You have electricity over there? That's supposed to be the next big thing. Electric stairs, electric lights, electric carriages - stuff like that.

[ this probably elucidates how far back he is a little more, though. ]

Pfft. [ Sorry Johnny, she can't help but laugh yet again. ] Yeah, there's some electricity. But not even close to how much there was in Tokyo where I was living.

[ Big television screens, stadiums full of lights - there's really nothing like that except on "futuristic" Earth, she guesses. ]

Electricity was the next big thing. There was pretty much electric everything in my time. Even wheelchairs. Here, most stuff runs on magic, it seems like. I don't really get magic, so I just try not to worry about it. Is it only magic where you're living? Really? No electricity?

[ what are they doing, living in the forest with dinos????? ]

[ eats his floor meat shamefully... ]

I don't really know... Electricity kinda seems like magic to me.

[ that's half a lie - he's pretty sure he'd be able to tell the difference - but he doesn't want to give up any information about their singular safe haven if he can help it. Not even to Misa. Being nice doesn't necessarily mean she can be trusted with sensitive information, too.

though he's curious, he doesn't comment on the electric wheelchair bit. It's still a source of shame for him, even though years have passed, and his curiosity doesn't outweigh his chagrin. ]

And I don't really "get" magic, either, so it makes about as much sense. [ a beat. ] That sounds cool, though - an electric city. Wish I could live to see it.

[ Thankfully, that answer totally seems like the truth to her. Airheadedly: ]

Oh, duh. I feel stupid, of course you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference.

[ Because if he hasn't seen electricity before, how would he be able to discern it from magic....? ]

The only way you're ever gonna be able to see something close to that is in Achamoth - but that's not happening any time soon. [ even she is not stupid enough to believe that he would willingly come to Achamoth at any point in the near future... maybe down the line, though. ] To be honest, what freaks me out more than the magic are the animals. Did you know people keep big spiders as pets in Achamoth? It's super weird and kinda gross.

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