Kurumi Kobana has decided to just go for a walk in the park. This is one of the frequent hangouts for her big sister Kotomi (because there's a library here), but Kotomi's off in another part of town, and Kurumi has decided to take a bit of a breather to try to clear her head from all that nonsense that happened almost a month ago.
Thus far, she's had mixed results. She's walking along purposefully in Verone's elementary school uniform, looking generally unhappy with the current situation, though not completely unapproachable.
Heelys are awesome.
Being a superhero with the ability to shoot fire around at such a rate as to fly is awesome.
The combination of both? Well, that's gotta be double awesome, right?
Riley lined herself up on a long stretch of path, being careful as to avoid the large throngs of people that typically massed in the King Penguin Park, holding her phone in her hand recording herself as she took a deep breath. "I'm Riley Hunter, and this is the fuckin' stupide- I mean... this is Jackass!"
She started with a runup, sprinting down the pavement before jumping and locking the wheels down. Without wasting a second, she got into a crouched stance, holding her palms out behind her and...
PSHWOOOM!
She didn't notice Kurumi in her initial scan of the park, nor did she notice her until she was quite literally zipping past the girl!
Woosh!
In response to this, Kurumi throws herself out of the way with a high-pitched shriek! She's nowhere near as used to all this business as someone in her family she could mention. She pushes herself into a sitting position, glares after Riley, scrambles back to her feet, and sarcastically calls out, "Hi, Hunter-san!"
Roh roh! Riley shifted her hands forward to slam on the brakes, the jet like flames coming from her hands spitting and flaring as she stood tall from her previously hunched stance as she tried everything, even using the wind itself, to slow herself down. In the end though, it was not her own attempts that brought her to a halt. It was more the fact that heelys were never designed to travel at fourty odd miles per hour.
Plink!
One of the wheels came loose, smouldering as it flew far and free in a wide arc, slamming into the penguin slide's "head" before finally coming to a rest in a smoking tuft of grass. Riley herself on the other hand took quite the dive, though she managed to at least put her hands out in front of her, stopping herself from landing so hard directly on her face with another quick burst of thrust.
Of course, all that did was spin her over to land her on her back. Oops.
Still, she didn't seem too badly hurt by it, lying in a giggling heap before shooting a big two thumbs up combined with a cheesy grin over in Kurumi's direction.
"WOO!"
Kurumi furrows her brow, and heads over to where the wheel landed and stomps on it a bit to put out any stray flames. Then she turns back to Riley, and with considerable reluctance, she strolls over to where Riley's lying. "... You okay there?" she says, as though she isn't entirely sure she's actually hoping the answer is yes. Still, though, she gingerly offers Riley a hand to help her up. "... Kotomi gave me some of her magical girl manga for 'reference', and I gotta say, you don't really act like any of them."
Hand accepted! Riley was still laughing all the while, brushing herself down. "Hah, more than okay. That was *awesome*." Truth be told, she didn't look at all hurt, maybe save for a slight limp from when her leg was literally thrown out from under her. Unlike Kurumi, she wasn't just rocking her school uniform while out and about, in fact, she tended to wear it as little as humanly possible, instead favouring the sort of attire she had on right now which this time around consisted of her usual comfy hoodie, jeans and in this case, a pair of still slightly smoking heelys.
"Next time I'm gonna need to get out on the highway and try that. Bet that'd screw with some heads. I guess I'd need some like, rollerskates or something. Y'know, something that doesn't fall apart."
The comment about the manga got another laugh out of her too, though, she was still very much caught in the grips of a rather intoxicating addrenaline high. "Yuup, that's 'cos I make this whole thing look cool. The whole group I'm with, Prism Aegis, we're about 50% more awesome now I'm here. At least."
Kurumi shakes her head. "I mean, not gonna lie, I'd probably do something like that if I had fire-powers," she says. She's mostly recovered from nearly getting collided-with. "It's just weird that I've basically never heard of anything like this going on. Except for Sailor Moon, everyone knows the urban legends there."
She tilts her head curiously. "So there's different groups?" she says. "I don't think Kotomi mentioned the group by name ..." She stops. "Okay, Hunter-san, I gotta ask, since Kotomi just has magical girls on the brain. Is all this ... normal to you?"
"Normal? Nope, not normal at all." Riley rolled her shoulder, looking quizzically at it for a second before wincing. "Aaahh yup, that's gonna be sore in the morning. No, no totally not normal. Anything but normal. I haven't been in this all too long, hell, haven't even been in Japan all that long really but now I'm a superhero now. So that's a thing. Yeah, it makes about as much sense to me as it's probably making to you. Can't say I know much about the "sailor moon" crowd though, apart from what everyone else's heard, but there are totally different groups of magical girls around."
She looked back to her shoulder again, frowning. "Yeah hang on." Then just... popped it back in, not even wincing. "Ahaah.. yup. Ow. Okay, where were we? Groups right right. Yeah, bunch of those from what I can tell. Dunno why the whole frilly dress look's so popular but... it is apparently. I'm just glad I didn't end up with one."
Kurumi deflates at that answer. "Oh, thank god," she says. "Given that this is all really happening, I was starting to worry that I'm the weird one."
She winces as Riley pops her shoulder into place. "I'm just gonna ... assume that magical girls have some sort of fast-healing thing going on," she mutters. "Uh. And. Maria Hanazawa is a real actual vampire? Or, I mean, ex-vampire, however that works?" She shakes her head. "I really don't get any of this 'dream-world' business."
"Huh? Oh, uh, I think I heal a little faster now, I dunno. I haven't been keeping track" Riley rolled her shoulder again, this time just to test it. "Either way, I ain't gonna go around with this thing all outta place."
She thought for a second on the vampire question though. "Y'know, I haven't given it much thought. I *think* so though? I was too busy making Seasame Street jokes to really notice. Y'know, the count and all that. Uh, Dracula jokes too. I don't think she's a typical blood drinking vampire though, and I don't *think* she has huge freaky fangs." She laughed again, shaking her head. "Yeah I'm probably one of the worst people to be asking about this. I ain't got a clue how any of this works. Came to Japan, got superpowers. Shit, I need to put that on a shirt."
Kurumi nods. "Okay," she says. "I was mostly asking you because I didn't want to over-burden Kotomi, I'm kind of ..." She makes a face. "... having enough trouble not being able to say anything to Mom. When we got back home last time, she asked why Kotomi was all wet and I said 'she got attacked by a molecule monster' and Mom laughed." She shakes her head. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Kotomi-chan is excellent at making excuses with a straight face, but ... it's ... kind of worrying me that she has to." Looks like her shell is starting to crack there ...
Riley sighed. "The lying's the worst part, yeah. I've had to BS my way out of so much stuff." She plonked herself down on a nearby bench, taking a look at the ruined sole of her shoe for a moment. "Don't get me wrong, I ain't no angel. I've lied about things before, petty things though. Not anything like this. The molecule thing, some weird... dog person, a giant blob thing made up of literal nightmares. I ain't scared of it, but, I know it's something that could kill me. I know I'm staring down the damn barrel here. One mistake, and no more Riley, or, no more random people or... no more whatever buddy ends up buying the farm and no one's ever gonna know what really happened. I ain't probably the best person to be asking about that either, 'cos I don't really know how to deal with that either."
Kurumi sits down on the bench next to Riley. "... That's kind of comforting, sort of, in a weird way," she says. "Even the heroes don't think this is just completely fine." She smiles wanly. "Like. In the manga, all the magical girls just ... know how to deal with everything the instant they transform for the first time, sometimes they have whole speeches. But in real life ..." She shrugs.
She hesitates. "Kotomi would probably just say 'this is kind of wild' or whatever," she says. "While inwardly thinking 'this is the worst-case scenario', heh ..." She doesn't actually seem to think it's funny. "She did mention the nightmare blob thing. The ... Dream-Eater? Whatever."
"The first time I "transformed" I was too busy trying to not get my head knocked off by a five meter tall Babe Ruth monster thing to make any fancy speeches. It was a really weird day." Riley returned the smile, shrugging. "Yeah, I don't really know about any manga. It's not really my thing but in superhero comics and stuff people tend to stand around talking a whole lot more than what I've seen here. I got absolutely no idea how people have time to make all those puns while trying to fight off the bad guy of the week."
"I think the others were calling it the dream-eater yeah. Or nightmare something, I dunno. I just called it Cthulhu. Seemed about right, even though it wasn't an octopus thing. It was more like... like..." She scratched her head. "Y'know, I got no idea. Big stupid jellyfish? Probably a big stupid jellyfish. Really big stupid jellyfish. What I don't get though is why the whole magical girl or superhero thing isn't more well known. I mean, how did the molecule thing not make the news?"
Kurumi shakes her head. "Sounds like you guys have a full plate," she says. "Even without rescuing Kotomi-chan." Beat. "Unless you were rescuing Kotomi-chan that time, but uh." She shrugs. "Yeah, Kotomi just recommended them to me to 'see what it's like', but ... I'm not sure she wasn't just looking at it through rose-tinted ... stuff."
She laughs weakly at the question. "That's what I'd like to know!" she says. "Probably some weird magical-hiding stuff." She frowns. "Although, now that you mention it ..." She hesitates, as if she's not sure how much she should say. "... three or four years ago, there was this great big storm that caused some damage, and I remember ... having a really funny feeling while it was happening ..." Her voice trails off, and she shakes her head. "Yeah, I 'unno."
"I think Reiko said about that. People seem to just wibbly wobbly magicy forget about everything. I guess that's a good thing all in all but c'mon, how else am I gonna be as famous as Spiderman or whoever if people just forget about the awesome things I did five minutes late- wait a second." Riley blinked, looking at Kurumi. "You though, you're *not* forgetting it. That's the thing, if you were you'd just think this was all some crazy make believe game."
She shrugged at the mention of the storm though. "I was still in America back then, so, no idea. Lots of people get freaked out over storms though, that ain't that weird."
Kurumi blinks. "Well, of course I'm not forgetting it!" she says. "I mean, I wouldn't forget something like that, even in a million yeeeeeeeeoh jeez. We're gonna have to ask people about this who know better than we do." She stops. "... For some reason I'm suddenly one hundred percent sure that Kotomi-chan has asked Hanazawa-san how she could become a magical girl."
She really hopes she's wrong about what this means.
She smiles faintly, and gets back up. "Well, uh. I feel ... kind of better about all this," she says. There's a sudden mischief in her eye. "Maybe I'll ask Kotomi-chan to invite me over to Hanazawa-san's place for anime night, but I guess that won't happen for a few days, on account of her birthday tomorrow."
"Yeah that's the thing though, everyone else seems to forget it but you're not. There's gotta be something to that, right? You're totally going to need to come up with a superhero name and secret identity aaand-" Riley trailed off "Or uh, or not, magical girl stuff doesn't go like that I guess but still."
Riley stood up too, checking the time on her phone. "In case you're wondering, I have absolutely no idea how the whole "magical girl" thing happens. There wasn't really a radioactive spider moment. Although I guess there was a magical macguffin crystal thing."
Kurumi nods. "Yeah, it seems to be kind of different for different types," she says. "But yeah, it's always ... something else gives you the title, from what I've seen." She shrugs, and stretches. "Guess I'll see you around, then! It was good to see you again, and all that."
"Yeah, I'd best be headed out too. Nice to see you again though!" Riley grinned, looking up for a moment. "Oh, and sorry for knocking you over like that. See you around."
Aaand she was gone, surging skywards in a plume of fire, scorching the pavement beneath her. Walking was for suckers. Suckers and people who don't have superpowers.