savetheearth | Just a couple of apocalypse monsters hanging out

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Just a couple of apocalypse monsters hanging out

Who: Hajime and Phillip
What: Summer festival!
Where: Somewhere in Japantown
When: Afternoon of June 24

What with all the chaos and drama going down in Locke the past few months, someone in the vicinity of Hajime's restaurant in Japantown thought it might be a good idea to throw together a small summer festival. Keep the people's spirits up, bring in a few tourist dollars...everybody wins!

Phillip wanted to try takoyaki, and Hajime was quite willing to oblige. But then this opportunity came up, so hey, why not show the kid a little culture on top of some strange new food?

"So the restaurant's got a little booth over here," Hajime was explaining to Phillip as they walked. "My cousin's running it for the day, but I told him I could take over if he needed a break. We've got the takoyaki there, among other things."

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Phillip was totally overwhelmed. Hopefully, Hajime was holding his hand or something, because otherwise the kid would be gone in a matter of seconds. There was so much to look at, and the sights and sounds everywhere were very good at distracting him.

Hajime's mention of the takoyaki caught his attention again, and he nods with a smile. "Ok! All the stuff at your restaurant is really good, so I bet that is too!"

"I think we're the best, but I'm biased." Hajime made sure to keep a hold on Phillip; the last thing he wanted to do was explain to the kid's parents that yes, he'd lost their son somewhere. "Our booth should be right around here..." And it comes into view just as Hajime guessed, and he waves at the guy at the booth, who waves back. There are a few other restaurant booths in the area, and there's food everywhere.

Phillip is trying really hard to pay attention to everything, though once again Hajime will successfully distract him. Mostly because there is good. And also Hajime is one of the people speaking a language he can actually understand. "Oh, yay!" He really does like Hajime's food. (Or at least the food from his restaurant... he considers it Hajime's.)

Once they're at the booth, Hajime introduces Phillip to the guy running it. "Phillip, this is Hiro. Hiro, this is Phillip--you know, the kid from that after school program thing I was telling you about?" Because it's easier to explain away Phillip's presence this way instead of telling his cousin that hey, he's an apocalypse monster and this kid's an apocalypse monster and so they're bonding.

Phillip doesn't question the lie, possibly because his mind is too distracted to notice that there is a lie. He grins up at Hiro and waves, still holding onto Hajime's hand with the other one. "Hi Hiro! It's nice to meet you!"

"Hey, kid. Nice to meet you, too." Hiro motions to the takoyaki pan. "I got it all heated up for you guys--go on, Hajime, show the kid how all that practicing you did paid off."

Hajime turns to Phillip. "So? Ready to try some takoyaki?"

Phillip nods, grinning. "Yeah, I'm ready!" He's excited, too! He doesn't know what it tastes like or anything, but he figures that if Hajime makes it then it has to be good. He likes to try new food anyway. Not like his sister. She's picky.

"Alright, well...first thing you do is mix up the batter...which Hiro already should have done by now, if he knows what's good for him." There's a bit of good-natured cousinly teasing going on there, and it earns Hajime a light punch in the arm from Hiro, who passes him a pitcher of batter.

"Then you pour it into the pan like this, and put the octopus in like this..." Hajime definitely seems to know what he's doing as he goes through the process of assembling the takoyaki.

Phillip looks over the stand at his work, completely fascinated. He's never seen anything like this... "Wow... You're really good at this!" Though there would be no way for him to tell if he was bad at it, really. Regardless Phillip is watching the process with great interest.

"Now I am." Hajime is expertly flipping those takoyaki balls around. "I had to practice a lot." Actually, no, not really. Not when it had come from a random Echo. But as far as Hiro is concerned? Yes, yes, Hajime had practiced a lot. Got to keep that up for the benefit of his cousin.

After a little bit, Hajime flips a few of the finished takoyaki out of the pan. "Here you go, try one. Just be careful--they're hot."

"Well, yeah! To get good at stuff you have to practice." Phillip nods, sort of forgetting for the moment that Hajime said it was an Echo... oops. (It helps in this case, at least, since Phillip would be likely to totally blow it.) Either way, practice at some point is important, right?

Phillip will happily take the offered food, grinning up at Hajime. "Thanks!" They smell really good, after all. He waits for them to cool, blowing on them some to help them on their way, before taking a bite. And, to his great surprise, the taste combined with the sights, smells, and sounds of the festival spark an Echo.

He's quite confused when it passes, and... when everyone around him apparently starts speaking English. It has to be English, right? Since he can suddenly understand it? Phillip doesn't take the time to think of further explanations when he looks up at Hajime once more, smiling and saying in perfect, albeit incredibly cutesy, Japanese, "They're really good!"

Well, that was unexpected. Hajime didn't think he'd used the language enough around the kid for any of that to rub off, and he certainly wouldn't have used it in such a cutesy fashion, anyway.

Hiro just starts laughing. "Hey, you never told me the kid could speak Japanese!" There's another light punch in Hajime's arm. "And you know I got a mouth on me, man."

If it's any consolation, Hiro's comment gets Phillip to look as confused. "Huh?" he says, looking from Hiro to Hajime. But he doesn't speak Japanese. What's he talking about?

Hajime looks thoughtful and asks Phillip in Japanese, "So what do you think of the takoyaki?"

Phillip looks up at him and smiles, responding in Japanese. "It's really good! Thank you for giving me some."

"You're very welcome." Hajime also adds, "And you're also speaking very good Japanese." He has no idea what else to say, really.

"You been teaching him?" Hiro asks him.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, he's a really fast learner..." Very fast. Super-fast. Amazingly fast.

Wait... he's speaking Japanese? How is he doing that? Was it that Echo? Weird... so far he didn't know anything about past him that would have been about Japan.

"Um... thanks," he opts for, carefully (and still in Japanese) and still obviously quite confused.

Hajime is also quite confused, and so some sort of distraction may be for the best. "Do you want another takoyaki?" He's back to flipping them around in the pan. "Hiro, try to drum up some customers, would you?" And that gets his cousin out of the way for a few moments...

Phillip will just nod, looking over as Hiro leaves before whispering, "Am I really speaking Japanese?" He doesn't know how that happened! He's not trying to!

Hajime gives him another nod. "Yeah. Something from a pulse?"

"I guess. I just got one, so..." Phillip frowns, looking down at his takoyaki. He's blaming this. ...It's still delicious, though, and he can't get it from something more than once, right? "How do I stop speaking in Japanese?"

"Uh..." This is a hard question for Hajime, who has been bilingual for as long as he can remember. "Try thinking really, really hard on English, maybe? It might help if you read something written in English..."

Actually, that made him wonder if Phillip could also read Japanese, but first thing's first...

"Ok..." Phillip focused, frown creases in his forehead. When he next speaks, it is in English. "Is it working?"

Hajime breathes a sigh of relief. "Yeah, it is." He was suddenly quite glad he'd never had problems shifting away from the weird monster language he'd pulsed back, though he suspects being bilingual beforehand certainly helped. "If you had to get a random one here, that's at least easier to explain away than other things I could name."

Yeah, that's true. Better this than that huge form he got with the snake. "But why would it be Japanese?" he says, immediately slipping back into the language- in an environment where he's surrounded by one and not the other, without concentrating he winds up defaulting to whichever he's hearing. "I don't remember anything about that."

Hajime shrugs. "Better that than some weird monster language like I got." At least the kid hadn't started speaking anything like that. "I guess the other you spoke it...didn't you have a contract or something written in Japanese, too?"

"Oh! Right!" He'd forgotten about that- mostly because he decided he was going to forget about that. It had upset Matt a lot. "I guess I must have, then. Pharos isn't a Japanese name, though." He's still not sure it's a name at all.

"Well, neither is Joker, but that's what they called me, and all of my memories seem to be in Japan." Hajime shrugs a little sadly. "And there's a lot of this that doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, I guess. It would be nice if it did." Phillip can't help but pout a little at the thought, glancing to the side in frustration. At least it's not a monster bug language.

"I think a lot of us would be a lot happier if it did." Hajime shakes his head. "I mean, I've been wondering why a giant bug who liked being a human needed to know how to make takoyaki, of all things."

"But that's really cool! And they're delicious!" He doesn't want Hajime to feel sad at all. "Maybe you liked to make it because delicious food makes people happy or something."

"Well, that's why I like doing this sort of thing now, anyway." That gets a smile out of Hajime. "I'd say it's good enough."

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Just a couple of apocalypse monsters hanging out

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