[IC] Jo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 1: Lichii Sha

[lord pringle]

The sun beats down, on this fine Wednesday morning in September. It's 70 degrees and pleasantly sunny. A warm wind blows in from the desert, which is, it occurs to you, not a very helpful qualifier. Kids are walking to school, Marc is making fresh bread and all the birds are chirping. You could live here in Mars forever.
But you're still wondering if these are really your thoughts.
For some reason or another, you're on The Road. Maybe you're getting a morning coffee at Alice's or Marc's or looking out the Motel's window or maybe just enjoying this perfect day (that has followed three perfect days before it). You're still just remembering your real life, but it's clear the people around you don't. They don't seem to notice that anything is amiss. For instance they don't notice the 10 foot tall rabbit-man bounding down the street right now.
...
Wait...
There's a 10 foot tall rabbit-man strutting its stuff down the road now. It turns and looks, making direct eye contact with you, before hopping away. No one on the street seems to notice it, or at least if they do, then they're more used to things like this than you.
Could this be related to that power you have? The power of "Stand"?

[Amaril]

Slumping over the table, Aaron clutches his aching head, squeezing his eyes shut against the lights. Why is it so bright?

Come on, man, think. You've got to remember.

Bustle and chatter fills Alice's, an unclear drone that makes it hard to focus. When he walked in, he half expected everyone to be speaking alien languages, but nothing so obvious; everything seems completely normal. It almost feels more wrong this way. If everything were completely different, he'd be able to think he was just dreaming and having trouble waking up.

Okay, okay, so...I woke up, and I wasn't at home; I was in Mr. Johnson's apartment, on his sofa bed. He called me 'son', told me to get my ass out of bed and get ready for school, had no idea what I meant when I asked what I was doing there. So...what? How did I get there?

Trying to think is like swimming through pea soup. He struggles to focus, to remember, but...nothing. The past three days are completely blank. He only knows the length of time from checking his phone calendar.

"Goddammit!" Frustrated at his brain, he bangs a fist down on the table--and there it is again. That buzzing, prickling sensation, running up through his arm, a bit like an electric shock, but not painful. And...weirdly exhilarating. It takes him a second to realize his headache has cleared up a little, and he can open his eyes without the light stinging. For a second, he feels like someone is standing right behind him, watching the back of his head; he spins around in his seat, but there's no one there. Again.

He slumps back over the table. "I must be losing my f***ing mind..."

A few deep breaths to fight down the rising panic, and he lifts his head up again. Outside the window, a ten-foot-tall rabbit-man hops down the street. Wait, what? Aaron does a double-take, squeezing his eyes shut, counting to three, then leaning forward to get a better look.

It stops. It looks at him. It turns and continues on its way.

An image enters his mind--a shot from The Matrix. Follow the white rabbit...

Feeling that things can hardly get any more bizarre, Aaron gets out of the booth and heads for the door.

[Nettlekid]

Yawning and rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes, Boss has spent the last ten minutes wrenching himself from the grip of his sheets and bed at the Half Moon Motel and getting ready for his day. It's slow going, Boss has been feeling a little hazy ever since he went to sleep. He was hoping that a calm night and a little lie-in would shake that, but he feels as dizzy as ever, and a little nauseated. What's worse, he's finding it hard to concentrate on the work he's been doing for the past three days. It's like looking back when you cram for a test for six hours the night before and a week later you can barely remember the class, it just drains from your mind. The last few days he's been on a real roll, though, and it would suck to lose that momentum now. He's probably just ravenous, Boss decides to himself, and his stomach seems to agree. He gets himself together and heads out onto the Road.

Half an hour later he's sat comfortably at the counter at Alice's, not showing any restraint on a plate of corned beef hash and fried eggs. His nausea's gone, which is a relief, but he can't shake the cloud in his head. He's alternating sips from a glass of water and a cup of dark coffee, in case he's either dehydrated or suffering a little caffeine withdrawal, without knowing which. Resting his head in his hands, he takes a glance outside the window onto the main Road to people-watch. He found himself watching something that wasn't people, that was watching him right back before continuing on down the road.

His nausea returned, just a little.
"Hey, Alice," he asks after a pause. "The high school here, the, uh, the mascot...Did they change it, recently?"

[Devixer]

Alanna walks down the side of the Road, occasionally sipping on a soda. It was just about her only real way of de-stressing, and stress was something she really needed to get rid of right about now. The last thing she really remembered of the last three days was waking up and seeing a room filled with packed boxes, and a man she barely recognized as Mr. Ian who couldn't stop talking about how proud he was of his daughter being the first of the family to go to med school. She had to get away from that, so here she was, trying to get a grip on what exactly she was doing over the last three days. But as hard as she tried to recall, she couldn't remember. It was like they'd just disappeared from her life.

She takes another long sip of her drink, and when she lowers the bottle, she sees some huge form out of the corner of her eye. What kind of rabbit was that? And why was it looking right at her? Her grip on the bottle tightens a little, and she looks for the nearest person to bother. "Hey, the hell's up with the bunny? Someone shooting a movie?" She couldn't really think of any movie that could involve a giant rabbit person, not one she'd pay to see at least.

[Silverfaun]

It was a strange, interesting, and ultimately unsettling feeling to have two sets of memories. Two whole lifetimes worth of experiences, sensations, thoughts and feelings. But one of them was completely false. It was a unwelcome weight upon the mind to have. What was the point of a whole set of false memories seemingly intact save for the last three days of which were a blur.

Shizuka stared up at the sky, clear and blue though diminished a great deal by her sunglasses. Someone had stuck her head full of memories that weren't really her own and made her live a fake life for the past three days. Spotting students walking towards school caused her to briefly worry about being late before she remembered herself. She was Shizuka Joestar. Not a foreign exchange student. She was here because... because...

"Damn it." The girl hissed under her breath, thoughts surrounding the past few days fuzzy themselves. Turning her eyes downward from the sky, Shizuka looked just in time to watch an unnaturally large rabbit-man pass by. Shizuka pushed her sunglasses up to rest atop her head as she got a clearer look. It wasn't normal that was certain but then what could be considered normal to her? "What the hell?"

'This must be the work of a Stand', Shizuka thought to herself, pushing away from the wall of Marc's shop. She picked up her student bag and began to follow the rabbit at a calm, relaxed, pace. Perhaps there would be answers ahead or perhaps there would only be more questions.

[lord pringle]

[Alice's Restaurant]
Alice doesn't look up from behind the counter when Boss calls to her at first. She rubs her head like she's in pain before looking up at him. "Huh, what?" She mumbles, sounding half asleep. Her husband walks over to you carrying a plate of pancakes. "No, I doubt they would. They been the Thunderbirds long as I remember 'n' I bet they will be till long after we're gone."
He walks over to a booth and hands off the pancakes. Then Aaron takes off. Alice's husband goes chasing after him, shouting, "Hey, you need to pay your bill!"
Alice doesn't respond and buries her head in her hands.
[The Road]
The person Alanna grabs gives her a blank look. "I don't know what you mean. There's no bunny. Are you playing a prank on me, young lady?"
The Rabbit-Man turns and looks at Shizuka. "VELLLVEEEET!" It booms. As you get closer to it, you can see that it's wearing patches of brown armor, with pictures of teddy bears all over. It makes eye contact with you and its eyes flash green. Suddenly your steps and all your movements slow down. It feels like you're moving through a giant bowl of tapioca pudding.

[Nettlekid]

Boss nods similarly absentmindedly, half paying attention to the couple behind the counter and half focused on his own thoughts.
"No, 'course, why would they change...?" he mutters in response, finishing the last of his coffee. He raises an eyebrow as Aaron heads out of the diner and Alice's husband calls after him.
That was...abrupt timing... Boss muses to himself. I didn't even notice him, but he left just after that...thing passed by. Could he have seen it too? No one else is reacting, but it's the kind of thing you'd jump up for. I'd better...
He taps his forefinger against the countertop vacantly, and none but a very select few can see a green hand overlaying Boss' own. Imperceptible ripples spread out across the countertop, out through the walls of the restaurant, and out of Boss' sight into the street. Then they come echoing back, up through the stool he sits on and back into the core of his being. Within the ripples is a palpitation like a quick heartbeat, and combing through the static Boss can hear Aaron's footfalls as he gets further down the road. Those footsteps will be in range a little longer, but he shouldn't delay.
"Hey, speaking of bills, I should settle mine. Busy day ahead, I, er, I think." Boss puts down enough to pay for the breakfast and heads toward the door, but pauses by Alice's husband near the exit where he feels comfortably out of Alice's earshot.
"Say, is all well with the missus? She might be looking a little unwell. Maybe there's something going around, I've been trying to shake something off."

[Amaril]

Aaron is out of it, wholly focused on where he needs to go, but the voice calling after him manages to halt his progress at the exit. Turning around, he sees Alice's husband looking affronted. "I didn't order anything," he says distantly, before turning back to the door and pushing it aside.

He sets off down the Road, following the rabbit. As he does, however, someone else catches his eye--a girl he doesn't recognize, wearing sunglasses and what looks like some kind of private school uniform, heading the same way a few steps ahead. Is she following it too? He almost dismisses the possibility, thinking it's probably just coincidence, but then the rabbit turns around and speaks, and she suddenly seems to freeze in her tracks.

Spotting a glimmer of hope that he isn't just going crazy, Aaron lengthens his stride to catch up with the girl. ""Hey," he half-whispers as he reaches her, not wanting to draw anybody else's attention. "Can you see it too?"

[Devixer]

Alanna twitches when she hears the rabbit-man-thing shouting. "The hell are you on about? It's right there, it just screamed. . ." She trails off as she looks around. Just about everyone around her didn't react to the rabbit. If anything, they were reacting to her grabbing someone. She lets the person go with a light shove. "Never mind. Guess I'm just seeing things." She walks off, towards the giant rabbit that apparently only she was seeing. Was she crazy? Well, maybe. Three days of blank memories, and now a giant rabbit. She definitely wasn't having a normal week so far.

[Silverfaun]

Before Shizuka even realized what was happening, before she could react, the rabbit man turned his attention towards her and made eye contact. Then the young Joestar found it difficult to move. It was difficult to describe, like the air had turned into jello and she was attempting to push her way through it. Shizuka growled in frustration as it became clear that she had just been attacked by the Stand. She had been foolish to go following after the rabbit when she was so distracted by her predicament and the second set of memories.

Shizuka was about to retaliate when she noticed someone approaching. He asked if she could see it too and, not able to easily nod, she replied, "Yes. Don't make eye contact with it."

[Amaril]

Thank God, Aaron thought, relieved. I'm not going crazy. The girl's warning confused him, however--to say nothing of the fact that he now had to explain an apparently real ten-foot-tall rabbit-man that only he and she could see hopping down the street in broad daylight. "What do you mean?" he said, watching the thing, careful to keep his eyes on its feet. "Do you know what it is? Why can't anyone see it but us?"

[lord pringle]

[Alice's Restaurant]
Alice's husband heads back inside, shaking his head. "Nah, I'm sure she's fine. When was the last time anyone in town was sick?" You certainly can't recall any instances, but your memory isn't the most reliable right now. "Just relax. Everything in Mars is fine." He gives you a warm wide smile. "Completely fine. Always has been and always will be."
[The Road]
The Rabbit-Man looks away from Shizuka, but she still feels the weighed down sensation. "VEEEELVEEEET!" It bellows at Aaron. It seems a little bigger than when you last looked at it, but that's probably a side effect of being close to a thing so much taller than you.
It then whips its head around 180 degrees and makes a snarling noise before it begins to bound away. As it does so, Shizuka feels her full range of movement return.

[Devixer]

Alanna growls when hearing more shouting from the Rabbit-Man. Here it was, shouting at people and nobody else was doing anything! It was making her pretty mad.

Well, if nobody else is gonna shut that thing up, guess I'll do it. She tosses her empty soda bottle aside and starts to dash after the rabbit thing.

[Amaril]

Aaron flinches back when the rabbit roars in his direction, but recovers swiftly when nothing appears to happen. He's about to turn back to the girl with the sunglasses, when he sees a familiar blonde pixie cut streak by. "Alanna?" He turns to see where she appears to be going, and is only more confused to find she seems to be running straight at the rabbit. "Hey, wait!" he calls out. "Can you see that thing too? What the hell is going on?"

[Silverfaun]

Shizuka feels a surge of relief when whatever force is weighing her down and slowing her movements finally ceases. Despite the powerful desire to summon her own stand and just lay into the rabbit-man, the young Joestar maintains her composure in this bizarre situation. Hearing quick footsteps, she glances aside to see a girl charging after the mysterious Stand before the boy speaking to her began following along. Shizuka sighs, runs her hand across her face while making sure her sunglasses remain atop her head, and says, "Good grief" before hustling along to keep up with them all.

[Nettlekid]

Boss gives a brief pause and a slightly blank stare.
"Welllllllll, I'd best be on my way. See you around, mate."
And he makes haste from the diner.

As far as he could tell, the man who'd left the diner hadn't exited Boss' range, but Boss could no longer feel the heavy footfalls on the pavement. So the man had probably just stopped further ahead. He does have the sense of the remnants of a loud noise bouncing between the buildings; someone had been shouting. And there it is - down the road is the peculiar entity, along with the man from the diner and two others. Boss considers the possibility that the rabbit had been eyeing down the other man instead of himself, since considering how quickly the man bolted this probably means something to him. Then again, Boss could absolutely see the rabbit on the road, and yet no one else besides those three was reacting. A thought occurs to him: Is this one of those...spirits? Like his own? He had only encountered one or two other people in his life with a spirit like his, but it did seem that only they could see one another. But no, he realizes, that if these three also see the rabbit that would imply they all have spirits too, and the odds of that were almost nonexistent.

Deciding to take a more removed approach, Boss takes a breath and begins strolling down the street nonchalantly. He can feel his heart beating quickly, but from within himself there is a tiny shudder which dampens the beat in case anyone, unlikely as it is, could hear his pounding heart. He's steadily approaching the other three, still a few dozen feet back, but close enough that he can hear if they speak. Whatever he does, he says to himself, don't look at the rabbit. He doesn't want it to know he's following, if it doesn't already.

[Devixer]

Alanna doesn't respond to Aaron as she sprints. It probably won't be much of a surprise to him if he does remember much of her. Even when she starts to lose her temper, she gets a bad case of tunnel vision, and doesn't respond to much of anything besides the object of her annoyance.

[lord pringle]

[The Road]
The Rabbit-Man begins to rapidly speed up. As it does, it seems to shrink. The rapidly shrinking Rabbit-Man starts jumping off walls and running up buildings, before jumping through an open window into the elementary school. It doesn't seem to notice any of the various people chasing it, but it made no attempt to hide itself.

[Nettlekid]

Boss picks up the pace, still trying to avoid drawing attention but not wanting to get too far away. He casts his eye over the three other young adults jogging on the street. He's a little wary still, because he's not sure what it would mean if they could indeed see that rabbit. But even moreso, he's come to realize that usually if you see one of these weird spirits, the person who it belongs to is nearby. And you might not see them, but they're probably watching you.

He puts a hand to his mouth and coughs slightly. An infrasonic wave passes into the ground at his feet and propagates out to the middle of the street, rising into the range of human hearing at that point. This "voice" is kept to hushed tones, so that anyone too far out can't hear, but to any listener it would seem like the voice is emanating from the spot on the middle of the road itself, yet moving with the group.
"Hey, you guys. Shh, don't look around too suddenly. You never know who's watching. Are you here because of that creepy rabbit? Is it familiar to any of you? I don't know why it's here, but I think I know what it is. It's a little hard to explain, but very rarely there are these unusual spirits that appear in the world, connected to individual people. I should know...I have one too. If something weird's going on, it's probably due to that. And I'm willing to bet that's one of them. Usually only people with a spirit like that can see another, but there are exceptions. Whatever happens, you should know that you can't fight back if it tries to fight you - only another spirit can fight against it. But do you have any idea why it was looking at you?"

[Devixer]

Alanna screeches to a halt, her eyes jolting around to follow the rabbit as it jumps around, and swears when it enters the elementary school. How the hell was she supposed to follow it now? Her fists are clenched as she thinks through her lack of options.

Then that voice appears out of nowhere, and Alanna flinches and looks around, giving no regard to the advice given for her to not do exactly that. Rather than listen to the voice or answer any of its questions, she settles for "Hey buddy! How bout you quit hiding and freaking show yourself already? I'm in a hell of a bad mood, so I'm really looking for someone to beat to a pulp!"

[Amaril]

Aaron stops short at the sound of the voice, ignoring it's urging to not look around and whirling to find the source--but he can't see who it is. It sounds familiar, but... "What the hell is going on?" he says to no one in particular. "Alanna, you know who that is? What's he talking about? Spirits and stuff...does he mean ghosts?" He's mostly gone back to talking to himself, though he glances hopefully over at Alanna and the unknown girl--they seem to have a slightly better handle on what's going on, at least.

[Silverfaun]

Shizuka was ready to follow after the rabbit after it jumped into the elementary school when she felt the sudden vibration and the voice coming from the road. She turned towards where the voice emanated from, raising an eyebrow before briefly face palming when there was talk of 'spirits' and 'ghosts'. "They're called Stands. And if you can see them, you must have one too."

The young Joestar woman knew she couldn't traipse around inside a school without drawing undue attention. Thus, she was going to have to call upon her own Stand's power. Striking a pose, one hand placed in front of her face, Shizuka spoke in a commanding tone, "Achtung Baby!" Immediately, the girl in the school uniform began to fade from view before disappearing completely. A moment later, the door to the school opened and closed.

[Nettlekid]

Deciding to keep his distance thanks to Alanna's rebuking, Boss was surprised to see Shizuka vanish into thin air.
Wait, have I misread the situation? Was she a spirit too, belonging perhaps to one of the other two? The spirits he had seen in the past looked usually very non-human, but perhaps the possibility exists.

Aaron had been the only one of the group seeming cooperative, so Boss directed his further dialogue to him.
"They can do much of what you would imagine ghosts to do, but it's not like they're the dead form of something once alive. They're inexplicable servants that act based on their master's will as an extension of the master's own body. You shouldn't think of them as a separate entity from the person controlling them, which means that the master is somewhere nearby. Again, don't whirl around looking, you don't want them to know that you know they're watching you.

Now, talking of these spirit masters, the girl that just vanished...she's one of the spirits, isn't she? Was it one of you that was commanding her, or do we have the inestimably low chance of having two unknown spirit masters running around here?"

[lord pringle]

[Mars Elementary]
This is the first time you've ever been in the school. And it is not what you were expecting. Despite being a small unassuming one story building on the outside, it's a fairly large two story building on the inside. Windows line the hallway, looking into a series of classrooms, all of which are completely empty. At least on this floor. At the other side of the hall is a sterile white staircase going up, as well as a door leading out to a big elaborate playground.
That is, of course, not on the actual outside of the building.
You feel especially uneasy.

[Devixer]

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't have one of those ghosts or spirits or Stands or whatever they are." That was a bold-faced lie, of course. But while Alanna had no problems beating up a person (or rabbit, in this case,) she had absolutely no desire to use her other powers on it. It was really better if nobody knew about it. "All I know is I can barely remember anything and now I see a stupid rabbit running around."

She looks towards the school again. "Screw it, I'm not gonna get anywhere talking." Alanna moves to head through the front door of the school. Class had to still be going in, right? Maybe they wouldn't notice her.

[Amaril]

Far from helping him understand, all the conflicting explanations and people running off mid-conversation leaves Aaron feeling more confused than ever. "Alanna, wait!" he cries, futilely, as his eternally headstrong classmate has already run off. "Damn it! Why can't anybody stand still for one minute and talk?"

The girl with the sunglasses--how did she disappear so suddenly? This voice, wherever it's coming from, seems to think she isn't real, that she's one of these spirits it's talking about. But didn't she say something about them? Something she called them...Stands? Why would they be called that? Whatever she did to vanish like that, Aaron is positive he saw the door to the school swing open before Alanna was anywhere near it. Somehow, it strikes him as odd to be seriously considering the possibility that she somehow turned invisible--considering the ten-foot-tall rabbit-man hopping down the street, and the strange voice apparently coming from nowhere, it's hardly that strange to think about. He silently thanks whatever power controls his life for Alanna's presence, to reassure him these things are real and he hasn't just gone completely crazy.

He needs answers--and whoever she is, that girl seems to understand what's going on better than anyone.

"Let's see how deep this hole goes," he says as he follows Alanna through the school door.

[Silverfaun]

Shizuka might have been given pause by the school's strange spatial differences inside and out. However, when she was invisible thanks to Achtung Baby's power, she felt a little more... invincible. She noticed that the others had followed her in, glancing behind her before looking about the area that she could see. It all looked fairly empty but there was something about that staircase that was unsettling. Even so, the young Joestar stood proud, defiant, and approached the steps before beginning to climb them. "Psst," She offered towards the pair of Stand Users, whispering in the hopes only they would hear her. "This way!"

[Nettlekid]

Boss grimaces. Clearly he'll have to follow the group and explore the school as well, but there is absolutely no way he can do that without drawing attention to himself from whoever that rabbit is serving. Heck, it would be weird enough for him to be in an elementary school anyway, discounting the circumstances with the rabbit.

Steeling himself, Boss breaks from the nonchalant path he had been taking and heads for the door of the school, opening it and following the others inside. He's not about to go in blind though, or rather deaf. The reverberation of each footstep is magnified and vibrations race outward across the ground like ripples in a pond from a thrown pebble, and as they bounce back from the extent of his range Boss starts to mentally catalogue the stationary objects. If something starts walking or running in this echolocation field he'll be aware of it, which can be just enough of an alert to avoid being ambushed. Of course, any rambunctious running children will toss up false positives, and that could get confusing.

[Devixer]

Getting a look at the inside of the school gives Alanna pause. She went to Mars Elementary when she was a kid, and it definitely didn't look like this. It couldn't look like this, not with what she saw from the outside. Was the rabbit or Mystery Voice doing this too? "I don't like this one damn bit," she mutters, glancing between Aaron and the guy that had followed them. That must be Mystery Voice.

She hears the whispering from Disappearing Act and approaches the staircase. A feeling of dread starts to gnaw at her with every step she takes, but she's not about to back out.

[Amaril]

Aaron jumps as the door opens again behind him, whirling around to see who it is--something about this place has him instantly on edge. He's never been inside the elementary school before, but given that it's only a one-story building, the stairs immediately stick out as not belonging.

"Hey, was that your voice we were hearing out there?" he addresses the newcomer, who he knows he's seen around town but can't name. Before he can get an answer, though, Alanna heads off after the disembodied whisper that sounds like sunglasses girl. Glancing uncertainly back and forth between the new guy and the stairs, Aaron decides following the most promising lead is still the priority, and awkwardly takes off following Alanna.