It's late afternoon, almost evening, and school is long since out. There's still a decent crowd around the area near the theme park, and the various businesses keep busy. A certain Takoyaki stand, indeed, is doing roaringly well today, with several students already queued up to place their orders.
Into this environment comes one of the more unusual sights of the city, a girl on a motorcycle. Okay, it's not terribly unusual, but it still attracts some attention, as people turn to look. Some to complain about delinquent teenagers, of course, but quite a few to admire her, as well. And she's certainly good-looking enough to turn heads. Parking and climbing off the bike, she slides the helmet off to reveal a wealth of deep violet hair, shaking her head a bit as she hangs the helmet on the bike's handlebars.
Ignoring the stares, she unzips her jacket and steps into line at the takoyaki stand with the rest.
Kukai has been out patrolling, walking around near the theme park. For once today he doesn't feel like the world is weighing down on him, so it's been a lot more cheerful than he expected. There could be ways it was better, sure, but for now it's pretty good.
It's getting on in the afternoon, and Kukai hasn't eaten since lunch, and the stomach of a teenage boy is a bottomless pit. He knows the takoyaki stand is open and doing good business now, so he heads towards it.
The sound of a motorcycle, an actual motorcycle, is different on the streets of Tokyo above and beyond the lighter whine of a scooter or other bike, and Kukai watches the girl go past. Daichi, sitting on his shoulder, invisible to everyone but those with magic, ooohs and stands up, looking at the bike, while Kukai looks at the girl getting off of it. He ends up in line behind her, and offers her a cheerful smile, Daichi floating over to look at the bike more closely before circling back around.
The bike is a nice Honda, a long way from, say, Saber's custom V-Max, but still nice. It looks like it'll be plenty fast.
The rider looks back over her shoulder at the new admirer, smiling lightly.
"Your little friend likes fast bikes, does he?" she asks of Kukai. "Good taste, at least."
Kukai blinks, then grins. "Shoulda guessed. Yeah, Daichi and I both think bikes are pretty cool. The rider's pretty cool too." He gives her a thumbs-up. "I'm Kukai. It's nice to meet you, miss...?"
The girl returns the thumbs-up, and a small figure - like a foot-tall pixie ninja in black and gold - peeks out from her hair to look Kukai over. She, too, matches the thumbs-up.
"I'm Hokuto," says the rider. "Pleasure to meet you as well, Kukai-kun. Small, sharp, and silent up here is Suzumebachi." The little ninja takes a bow when her name is spoken.
Daichi oohs and then wavewavewaves at Hokuto and Suzumebachi - he looks a little shorter than Suzumebachi, but he makes up for it with energy!
Kukai nods and then moves forward with the line as more people move away from the takoyaki stand. "Awesome. I don't think I've ever seen you before - course, I'm really bad at paying attention to things." He seems a little guarded but still quite cheerful around her - odds are she's friendly. The last few ninja he's met have been.
Suzumebachi grins and waves back at Daichi, then flies a loop around Hokuto's head before perching on her shoulder again.
"Well, I guess you haven't been looking terribly hard. I've been around. Then again, I don't think I've seen you much, either. You don't go to Verone, do you?"
Kukai watches Suzumebachi, then nods to Hokuto. "Nah, I go to Seiyou Public. I guess it's just that we move in separate circles, huh?"
"Seems like it," Hokuto agrees, turning to keep up with the crowd as the queue moves forward.
"Although maybe that ought to change, hmm? Since we have, shall we say, convergent interests?"
Of course, she thinks that Kukai is another Onmyouji, and Daichi is a shikigami. Nobody's bothered to tell her about Guardian Charas or the like yet.
Kukai moves forward with the queue and nods. "Absolutely! Maybe we could find a place to sit down and talk about stuff? I'd be happy to explain what I know about everything. Or I could give you my number, if you need to be somewhere."
Kukai doesn't even know what she is - but hey, this is a good opportunity to meet someone new!
Hokuto nods. "Well, if you like takoyaki, this is the place for it. Best in all of Tokyo." She waves a hand at the stand the two (and their small companions) are waiting in line for.
"We could chat over the meal, if you like."
Kukai nods. "That sounds awesome. And yeah, I've been here once or twice - it was really good." He watches as the line moves up, and she reaches the front. He waits politely as she finishes her order, then puts in his own for a large order of takoyaki.
Hokuto gets a rather large order herself, and a grape soda to go with it. "Indeed. I try to get out this way at least once a week, myself, when I can." Which isn't as often as she'd like.
"So," she says, leading Kukai and Daichi over to a nearby park bench. "You had a story to share."
Kukai picks up a cup of water to go with his meal, and follows her over to the park bench. "Hmm. OK, so. I guess I should start with the basic question, which also means I should explain myself."
He thinks for a moment, looking down at his takoyaki and taking a bite as he collects his thoughts. "Right. OK, so, I can tell you're not a Character Bearer, but anything beyond that, I have no idea about." He motions over to Daichi. "Daichi is my Guardian Chara. We... " He looks at Daichi. "Y'know, what do we do?"
Daichi grins and hops up. "We are the Guardians of all the students of Seiyou Public School, and all of their hopes and dreams! That means we guard all the hopes and dreams of the people that they care about as well!" He grins weakly, shrugging. "That means we pretty much guard all of Tokyo. And I'm also responsible for helping Kukai become the greatest sportsman ever in all the sports!"
"Nope, not a 'Character Bearer', whatever that is." She listens as he explains something of what that is. And munches happily on takoyaki.
"Sounds like the job keeps you pretty busy. All of Tokyo, hmm? That's quite the responsibility."
Kukai lets out a little annoyed mmph, nodding. "Well, I don't think anybody could watch all of Tokyo alone with everything that's out there, and all the people doing bad things, but thankfully there's a lot of people with basically the same goal."
He nods. "I try not to pry into people's backgrounds, though - everybody seems to know me and my friends." He grins for a moment. "Well, maybe not you, but only because we haven't been in the same circles." He looks at her. "What about you? What're you into?" He takes the chance while she responds to eat some of his takoyaki. Daichi is still looking over at the two of them from atop his head.
"Me?" Hokuto smiles. "I'm an onmyouji. I deal with rogue spirits, youkai, that sort of thing." She waves a hand casually.
"Suzumebachi here is my shikigami, my helper. She's a giant hornet spirit." The little pixie-ninja flutters her wings, then shows off the stinger that crowns her hand.
"Beautiful, isn't she?"
Daichi has been watching closely as the two of them talk. When Hokuto says she's an onmyouji, Daichi oohs and moves in closer. When Suzumebachi steps forward, Daichi moves over, looking at her and the stinger-weapon, then lets out a laugh and moves in, hugging her happily and spinning around with her before ending up on one side, raising the little pixie's hand high in a victory stance!
Kukai laughs and nods. "She's gorgeous." He grins. "I'll try not to be cheesy and follow that up with the expected answer. But an onmyouji? That's amazing. I went to see an onmyouji at one point when I was younger and I thought I was haunted." He blushes. "It turned out one of my brothers was playing a trick on me."
Hokuto ahhs softly, nodding. "Brothers can be strange that way, hmm?"
Suzumebachi seems to have taken Daichi's actions as a challenge! She twists and levers her arm, tossing the sports-chara through the air!
Daichi lets out a 'whee!' as he's tossed, rolling in midair and coming to a stop, grinning at Suzumebachi, taking a 'ready' pose!
Kukai rolls his eyes. "They can be real jerks but I love them." He looks at her for a moment. "You don't talk a lot, do you?"
Hokuto hmmms softly, sipping at her soda. "Whatever gives you that idea?" she asks, watching chara and shikigami tussle. "Sometimes I just don't have a lot to say."
Kukai nods, then smiles. "Well, all right. So..." He thinks, looking over at her. "Here, let me give you my number." He pulls out a little piece of paper and a pen, and begins writing it down. "If you have any questions about anything, feel free to call me." He hands her the paper.
Daichi and Suzume are still tussing goodnaturedly.
Hokuto takes the paper and nods, then writes another number on it. She tears the paper in half, and hands the half with her number back to you. "Sounds like a good idea to keep in touch," she agrees.
Suzumebachi seems to be enjoying the chase-and-wrestle game with Daichi, until their course takes them past a youngster leaving the park with an ice-cream cone. Spotting it, she buzzes down and scoops off a mouthful - not very much, really, considering her mouth isn't that big. Fortunately the kid doesn't seem to have seen her.
Kukai takes the paper and pulls out a phone, tapping the number into it. If she tries to look over, though, the numbers and words on the screen seem fuzzy to her, even though he uses it just fine. "Yeah. It's standard procedure for me at this point." He grins. "You're not the first magical girl who's not yet met the larger community I've run into."
Daichi is enjoying the game a bunch - she's strong and fast and agile and smart! It's everything he can do to keep up. He watches her take a bit of the ice cream and looks at it himself, then shakes his head. He'll just bother Kukai for some later. He waits for her to finish her treat, grinning. "Wanna keep going?"
Sweets are important business to bees, wasps, and hornets. Even to an incarnate giant hornet spirit, like Suzumebachi. She takes the time to savor the ice cream, and makes a note to ask Hokuto for more later. "You're on, boya!" she crows at Daichi as she swoops down at him!
Tucking the paper away, Hokuto nods. "My family has some connections, really... but I wanted to go my own path, rather than follow theirs. I'm going to be stuck with them enough in a few years..."
Daichi yeeees and then dives to one side, rolling out of the way. The game is back on!
Kukai looks over at the two of them for a minute, grinning, then nods at her. "That's the way it seems to go sometimes. A lot of the older families don't seem to like it when modern kids try to do their own thing." He makes a face. "I'm kinda glad my family doesn't have any expectations of me beyond 'don't suck, be a good person, make something of yourself even if it's not much.' I mean, I have high goals, but they're not pressuring me to be or do anything I don't wanna be."
He makes a noise. "Which is good, because if they were and I was trying to do all of..." He motions to Daichi and Suzumebachi, wrestling (where the taller, bigger Suzumebachi seems to be winning easily now that she's gotten ahold of Daichi.) "I'd be crazy."
"Indeed, indeed," Hokuto agrees. "At least what I'm doing here is something they can support, even if they don't particularly care for the way I'm going about it. Still, it could be worse," she muses. "I could be signing on with Umbra or one of those lot." Extraordinarily unlikely, but stranger things have happened.
"Say uncle!" Suzu insists, pulling Daichi into an arm-bar and pinning him in place. "Say it!"
Kukai grins and then shrugs. "It gets you out of the house for a while." Then she mentions Umbra and he blinks. "Not... super aware of that group, but from the name I take it they're not the best people. I fight more against the Easter Corporation. It's a long story. I don't mind sharing it, though."
Daichi flails, trying to get loose, but he's unable to move. "I'm not giving up!" He's lost, though, and eventually his movements slow as he's exhausted and stuck.
Hokuto nods. "It's just something the family's heard rumors about, some sort of corporate thing going on..." She shrugs. "Don't know much about it, to be honest, except the name."
She finishes the last of her takoyaki and pushes the plate aside. "Easter, though... them I've heard of, but I didn't know they were no-good-niks. What's up with them?"
Suzu flits over to the fence around the park, where a lamp-post makes a good place to sit, and sets Daichi on it before sitting beside him. "You're not half bad at that."
Kukai nods, leaning back. "Y'know, next time we have a party or a get-together or something I'll give you a call. You can come meet peoples." He looks over at his finished plate and nods, sipping from his water for a moment. "Easter?"
He sighs. "Well... Ok. So I'll try to compact this into as small an explanation as I can. Every child has a dream, a Heart's Egg, in their heart, something they'll use to change the world. Most of them either grow into it naturally or lose it along the way as they grow up. Some kids, however, if they ask for help from their dreams, will gain a Guardian Character~" Here he nods at Daichi. "~from their Heart's Egg. Easter has found this out and is using machines and science and a few Character Bearers they've got under their thumb to draw out the Heart's Eggs of kids, corrupt them into X-Eggs, and do bad things with them. They also work under the umbrella of a bigger, badder group named Eclipse. Them, I don't know a lot about."
Daichi hmphs, then grins, hugging Suzu's middle and nodding! "Thanks! I gotta get better at it."
"That'd be fun," Hokuto says with a little nod. Then she settles in to listen to the explanation of Heart Eggs and Guardian Characters.
"Hmmm, sounds like someone to watch out for, alright." She makes a mental note of the name 'Eclipse', as well. "So, you and some friends all have these Characters, and you try to keep them from stealing kids' dreams? That's pretty big stuff."
Suzu ruffles Daichi's hair and nods. "You gotta practice. Lots and lots, every day!"
Kukai nods. "Yeah. Well. It's not an every day thing. Most of the time I'm helping patrol for youma or hexes or curses or Shades or Noise or any of half a dozen other things. Plant girl youma scaring people in the park, crystal golem girl youma throwing their frigging arms at me and scraping a chunk out of my side while her master drains energy out of people and runs off. X-Eggs are my primary concern, but I get around."
Daichi nods seriously and grins. "Yup! Kukai and I are always training, no matter what!" He beams up at her, a happy, innocent grin.
Hokuto sips her soda as she listens, nodding. "Yeah, there's been all sorts of wonky weird crap go down the last few months. I got jumped by a dog-boy a few days ago, had to seal him and send him back to Makai with his tail between his legs." She shrugs. "So far I haven't had a lot of trouble with it, but, well. Always better to have friends, right?"
Suzumebachi grins back and nods. "Good! Keep it up and someday you'll be big and strong like me!"
Kukai nods. "The first time you run into a witch or a Shade or something alone you'll be happy you have somebody to call. They can be straight up deadly alone. It's good to have friends." He grins. "The other side of it is that a lot of them are really cool and fairly nice. At least, that I've met."
He makes a face. "That being said I've been guiding around a pack of ten year olds who've all recently come into their unified powers and acting as tank-slash-big-brother for them, so maybe I'm biased. I like everybody I've met so far, at least."
Hokuto nods and smiles lightly. "Definitely. And you would not believe some of the things that come out of Makai these days. I swear, someone over there is just plain curious, sometimes."
She hmmms again, then a thought occurs to her. "Hey, have you met the Sailor Senshi?"
That question brings a grin to Kukai's face. "Well. Sort of? I've worked with them all a lot, and.." He hmms. "One of their ...support crew is turning into a good friend of mine. I've been trying to hang out with any of them that're free but it's like trying to trap heat or crystallize starlight. They're nice enough, though." He grins. "I danced with Sailor Moon at one point. She loved it - hugs my neck and calls me her dance partner every time she sees me now. It was a good day. Why?" He grins. "Fan of theirs?"
"Eh, something like that. They're the ones who get all the publicity, after all. Nobody seems to report on folks like you, or me..." Hokuto shrugs again.
"So, naturally I'm a little curious."
Kukai aaahs and then grins. "Well there's a reason for that. Apparently something about magic makes normal people look around it or move away unless the person using it actively makes it so that they can see it. A few magical girls I've met even have powers that let them 'shift' things into pocket dimensions or the like so that normal folks can't even interact with us while we're doing whatever. The only reason Sailor V is on TV is because she's actively making herself think about being on TV and visible all the time. The rest of them - the rest of us - don't like the spotlight."
He nods. "Personally, I don't have much of a 'secret identity' inside the group. The downside of being a Character Bearer." He looks over fondly at Daichi, who's brought Suzu some more ice cream he got from one of the nearby stands on a little wooden tasting spoon. "Even if all you've got is the potential for magic, you can probably hear if not see them. So everybody magical knows who I am and who my friends are." He sips his water only to hear a sucking sound, and shakes his cup annoyedly, hearing only the faint shaking of ice.
"Yes, I'm familiar with the phenomenon. Most people don't want to see it, so they don't." She shrugs. "It works, I'm not complaining about that. Just the way some of the fanboys react. Doesn't help that they wear those short skirts. I don't think I'd be daring enough for one of those..."
Hokuto finishes off her soda and hmmms softly. "Secret identity... well, I'm me, I'd have to actually build myself a spiffy magic disguise like the one they use." Or at least, she assumes they use, since nobody's recognized them.
And then there's Suzu-chan, grinning at the attentive (if possibly flirtatious) Daichi. She noms a handful of the ice-cream and grins wider.
Kukai points at her. "That's the great thing, though. Everybody expects an onmyouji to be mystical and stuff. It's just that you're extra-mystical." He grins. "You're hiding in plain sight. It's great." He can't help or stop himself. He leans back, picturing her in a Sailor Sentai sized skirt. ".... I dunno. I can't see it. The biker babe outfit fits you better. It's daring in its own way."
Daichi's not really flirting - at least, he may be, but he doesn't realize it. He's just doing something nice to make his new friend happy, because he's just that awesome. He returns the grin, though.
"I have to admit, I do like the 'biker babe' look, myself. It's fun, it looks great, and nobody bothers me." She leans back in her seat and stretches out, grinning. "And yeah, everybody knows the family does that kind of stuff. So nobody questions it, even when I have to do crazy stuff."
Suzu thanks Daichi politely, remembering her manners at last, and continues nomming the ice cream until it's done.
Kukai nods, still looking at her. An image pops unbidden into his head. "Huh. I bet I know what your costume would look like kinda if you did have to have one, if you wanna hear. I must be hanging around too many girls." He chuckles. "And yeah. It's really great cover. I'm kinda surprised I haven't seen it before."
Daichi smiles and drops the spoon in the trash, then returns to his seat on the lamp next to Suzu, grinning.
"Most boys your age haven't got a clue what looks cool on a girl, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt..." Hokuto shakes her head. "Still. Go on, spill."
Suzumebachi grins and ruffles Daichi's hair again, then flits back over to perch on Hokuto's shoulder. "The time, Mistress," she murmurs into the girl's ear.
"..." Hokuto pauses and looks at her watch, a slim, expensive-looking piece. "Crumbs," she mutters.
Kukai laughs. "Yeah, true. Well, still. More like a knee-length skirt, and an off the shoulder blouse, and some sort of transparent stole or shoulder cover. Just popped into my head."
He sees Suzumebachi float over, then sees her look at her watch. "Hey, you've got my number, I've got your number, if you wanna call, go ahead and call anytime - talk, trouble, whatever. And I hope I get to see you again. This was nice."
He stands up, as Daichi heads over to sit on his shoulder. "In any case. Good luck in your struggles!"
"Hmmm. Maybe," she muses. "A lot'd depend on the colors. And I'd need to fit in my belt in all that, some way to carry ofuda and such."
Hokuto nods and gathers up her trash. "Sure thing, and thanks. It was great to meet you. Maybe I'll drop by to visit sometime, meet the others."
"And good luck in your own as well!"
And then it's time for her to depart, dropping her trash in the bin and sliding back onto her bike to zoom off.