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 Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 1:04 am
If Jett had thought there was anything wrong with calling the people that had gotten dragged into the Surrounding with him ‘Civilians’, he made no indication of such. Being referred to time and time again for several weeks straight had put him in the mind frame to refer to them as such.
Watching Eric blankly for a few seconds while as the redhead thought of an answer felt a bit awkward, mostly because Jett wondered if he’d accidentally zoned out (how uncharacteristic of him) and missed the answer. Relieved, to some level, when Eric finally spoke, Jett was still choosing his words carefully.
Honestly—and maybe it was just because of Eric’s delightfully dapper outlook on life—Jett didn’t think the man was intelligent enough to catch any slip Jett might make. Or, at the very least, that Eric wouldn’t be looking for holes in Jett’s story. No, because they were friends, right?
“I was just thinking, that’s all,” Jett replied. “It’s not like I’ve heard whispers and rumors of things like that. But I do know that it’s weird as ******** that we all teleported into space like that—and then got stuck there. Honestly, if those people hadn’t attacked? I don’t even know if we’d ever have gotten home. They must have come to rescue us or something,” he said, nodding slightly to himself.
Any ally to a senshi was an enemy to him, and if Eric had already run into one of them, Jett was concocting some method by which to utilize the male—who he suddenly considered useful and, therefore, worthy of friendship.
“But I still don’t trust the senshi here. Any of them. You should be careful. I want to know when they’re up to something. I might not be some superhero or anything, but…”
Eric seemed like the heroic type, yeah?
Probably the type that rescued puppies from the rain. He’d understand, of course, wanting to help poor, innocent people.
“But if you run into any of those senshi again, let me know, all right? I don’t want them to do anything freaky to you. I’ve got your back from now on. I mean, that’s what friends are for. Right?”
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 2:14 am
"Right."
He nodded.
"I'll let you know though, I don't plan on making my encounters with them a habit. If they did something, I mean, using those powers of theirs, wed be hard pressed to stop them. They’re from bloody space after all. They’ve got magic powers and all that, all I’ve got is a bloody guitar and a desire not to get stuck up there again."
He glanced out the window, he was suddenly very conscious of how public they were on this bus.
"They do seem to do us the favor of walking around in those, you know, somewhat showy outfits. Hopefully that’ll make them easy to spot... Wait, how exactly am I supposed to let you know if I see one? I don’t know where you live or how to get in contact with ya, running into you today was just a happy coincidence. Or do you ride this bus often?"
Eric sounded a little hopeful as he asked that, though he tried to conceal the hopefullness in his voice.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 2:57 am
Having focused his attention on Eric while in the process of trying to manipulate him to do his bidding, Jett did not miss the hopeful tone of his words. “…Not really,” he answered earnestly. “The only reason I’m here today is because I slept in. Didn’t have enough time to get gas for the car before school.”
Clearly Eric was fond of the bus, so Jett wasn’t going to go so far as to insult his tastes and hobbies. “I guess that could be a problem. But, we’ve run into each other now, so one could only assume that we’d run into each other again. But.”
Was giving Eric his phone number a good idea? He certainly wasn’t going to give him his address. And, theoretically, Eric could be a good source of information. He had mentioned being a street performer—and looked innocent enough. He didn’t seem the sort of guys to have enemies, nor did he seem particularly menacing in any manner.
Sure, Eric was a bit too enthusiastic for Jett’s tastes, but—hell, worst comes to worst, he could just block his number or something. He didn’t even consider asking if Eric had a working phone or not and just pulled out a sticky note from his bag. A ball point pen was slightly more difficult to locate, however upon attaining both instruments, he scribbled down his number in a scrawl that denoted he’d spent much time practicing his handwriting. “You can call or something if anything comes up.”
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:35 am
"Right."
He nodded, sticking the number in his pocket. Eric actually didn’t own a cell phone, but that wouldn’t be an issue. He could use a street phone or a friend’s phone if something came up.
"I'll definitely give you a call if I see one of them muckin around."
Excitement was rising in Eric. He imagined this must be what a militia felt like, or a neighborhood watch. He spent a moment wondering why he was comparing those two things, they actually weren’t that alike.
"Should we find others? You know, other people to help us out? We'll need numbers if we have to, you know, fight or something. We don’t have any powers, and I can't get a gun in this country. You have your fist fighting, but we're probably going to need some back up if they start messing around out here, and I don’t think the police are going to respond to a call about magic weilding aliens."
He was already thinking about uniforms and code names. He knew he was getting ahead of himself, but this seemed like the exact fix to the emptiness he had been feeling lately. He felt like he was DOING something, achieving something. It felt good.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:56 am
The concept of finding of finding others to help out in this little game both peaked his curiosity and inspired him. Realistically, the idea of collecting a bunch of people who were interested in the senshi and what they were up to seemed like a fair enough start. And it was inconspicuous—a few people who were suspicious of these strangely clothed individuals and were collecting information on them, finding out what they could?
Jett might not have been so interested in the questions of what they actually were, but if he could get information in any way, shape or form, sure. He’d do it. If it would give him the upper hand? Definitely.
”I think that sounds like a pretty good idea, Eric,” he said after a moment; he didn’t question why the male didn’t give him a return phone number and figured that unless Eric was giving him information, he really didn’t have much of a reason to call him, anyway. It wasn’t like they were chummy enough to grab a beer and watch a game together. “But we don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves,” he reminded. “The police might not be able to respond to a call about magic wielding aliens, but they can certainly respond to a call about costumed, miscreant hooligans tearing the place up.”
Never mind the fact that he didn’t know where to go looking for allies—not that he was really much for recruitment. He wasn’t going to go advertise a spot in a group of what he suspected would be perceived as conspiracy theorists—or just plain imbeciles.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 12:50 pm
Eric nodded, getting more and more excited as he thought through what to do.
"Oh aye, we'd have to be subtle. We couldn't just go around saying 'The Senshi are coming, the Senshi are coming!' people will think were touched."
He bit his nail, thinking about what they could do.
"We could try to find those people that survived the whole debacle in space and recruit them. I don't think it’s likely that they'll be able to deny what they saw. We should avoid that green haired woman; she seemed to think that just because they smiled at her like they were nice people they could be trusted."
He thought over the other people he had run into.
"There are a few though, I think if we tracked them down, that could be of use to us. And together we can keep an eye on those Senshi people and if they try any more funny business we can..."
He hadn’t thought about that. What would they do? Kill them? Yikes, that’s not a pleasant thought, and he wasn’t really interested in doing that. He’d need some pretty concrete evidence they were a danger to others before he even considered killing anyone else.
"...You know, stop them. And we can have some secretive way of knowing who we are, like a button or a scarf or something, I don't know. We could be the star watch! Or sky watch? I don’t know what do you think?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 1:21 pm
“I think that you’re onto something,” Jett said, trying to be encouraging without sounding like an idiot. He wasn’t sure he could avoid green haired broads, wear a scarf with a button on it, or handle being called the star/sky watch.
“You seem really on top of all of this,” he said with a nod. “You should be the group leader. I mean, I bet you see a lot of people on the street and make a lot of friends like that. Besides, with your natural charm and charisma?” he leaned back, wearing a very suave smile. “You’ll have our numbers grow in no time. And I guess I can see if I can recruit anyone from school. Not sure who I know there, but if I find anyone else that lived through the whole space fiasco thing, I’ll make sure to bring it up with them.”
He seemed satisfied with this bus ride; of all the ways today could have gone, it seemed like it was heading in the right direction. By making Eric leader of whatever little group it was they were forming, he had little or no obligations—and he honestly suspected that Eric would have more drive and time to devote to it since Jett was already busy leading two lives.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 1:39 pm
He nodded enthusiastically. This was a great plan, he was sure of it.
"All right. Well I'm almost to my stop here, but I’ll call you later on when I have some things pounded out. We’ll have some sort of identifying mark or whatever so that when we see each other well know we're all in sky watch. I think we should go with sky watch, star watch just sounds... well, not as good, you know?"
He felt ood about this. He also felt tired all of a sudden; the whole night seemed to wash over him at once like a bucket of warm water, the hours tugged at his eyelids. He yawned.
"Well keep a running list, you know, of known senshi. Where we’ve seen them, their movement patterns, and any unnatural occurrences that might coincide with their visits. We can even go on patrols in their popular stomping grounds, looking to peek in on their activities and see if we can’t catch them red handed. Well bring cameras to collect evidence."
He scratched his neck.
"Well probably have to go out in pairs, you know? To keep safe. One person can have the camera and the other a baseball bat or something in case they attack us. We'll have the members sign some sort of waiver beforehand. Oh and we should probably put someone in each group who had a cell phone, in case you have to call the police."
He bit his lip.
"Well need some sort of home base, my mates place won’t do. Do you know where we can meet?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:24 pm
Jett was liking this idea very much—having a running list of the senshi they encountered and where and when they were sighted. He was very pleased with Eric’s enthusiasm, for once, and thought that all of his ideas were coming together quite nicely.
While he wasn’t particularly keen on offering his house to a bunch of strangers—and, quite honestly, didn’t want his mother to be in any way involved in all this weird s**t. He knew how she’d act, of course—she’d smile and say it was glad he had friends over and offer to bake them cookies or something cliché.
“Well. We can cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, if you need to meet up or something, you can give me a call and we’ll figure something out. I’ve got a pretty lenient schedule. School or work during the days, social life and sleeping at night. We’ll worry about a meeting place when we get more people involved, that way we can figure out what works best for everyone, how’s that sound?”
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 3:39 pm
Eric nodded.
"We'll have to find somewhere remote, private where no unwanted eyes can peek in on us. Somewhere we can leave our notes safely to keep track of everything. Somewhere secretive."
Eric didn’t realize how similar he must have seemed to a ten year old boy building his first secret club. To Eric, this was very serious. It was creating order out of chaos, he was making sense of the sensless occurrences of the last month.
In a way, he was answering his own question. Why?
"But you're right, we can work on that when we get a few more members, maybe we can get a member who has a place like that already. We'll have to see how it goes."
He stood. They were only a block from his stop, now, and his aching legs would need some time to warm up before he could even imagine making the trip from the bus stop to his friend’s house. In reality, it was a lucky coincidence that the bus he was on just happened to stop near his house, he hadn't actually thought about getting home from this bus.
"I'll put together some notes on that one senshi I ran into, and where I saw her. That might be her regular hunting grounds for whatever it is she does, and we might be able to observe her again there."
He was careful to say observe, not catch. He still didn't want to commit to anything violent until he knew more.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:19 pm
”Your stop?” Jett asked, glancing towards the stop the bus was approaching; it was mostly rhetoric; there was no other reason to stand up on a bus if you didn’t have an intention to get off. Assuming it was such, he intended to finish off the conversation as best he could before Eric left. “Sounds like a good plan. Give me a call when you’re done with that or if anything else comes up. Nice catching up with you,” he added, delivering a bit of friendliness to the conversation. “We’ll definitely have to do it again.”
His stop wasn’t for a fair few minutes, but judging by the position of the sun, he still had plenty of time to get to school. And—hell—who cared if he was late, anyway? He was glad he hadn’t tried to mirror walk to somewhere near the school and then just walk there—or taken the opportunity to go get gas for the car and ignored keeping up his timely schedule.
This had been very productive—and left Jett feeling much better.
It might not be much—it might be a foolish endeavor and a waste of time, but gathering any sort of information seemed like a good idea. In the Surrounding he’d been charged with spying on the senshi and had found nothing of value, but now? Now they were in his terrain, and now he knew what he was supposed to do and what was expected of him.
In this situation, no information was bad information, and given that there were already battle hardened, skilled senshi, Jett didn’t want to get caught with his pants down if he could avoid it. He wasn’t foolish or delusional enough to think it would all be smooth sailing, but, damn it, he wasn’t going to squander this chance. He hoped for the best—hoped it wasn’t going to be a waste of time. The senshi had been chatty with civilians up in space, maybe it would be the same down here.
“You take care of yourself,” Jett said with a slight nod of his head. He didn’t want anything happening to the male now that there was a use for him—now that they’d hatched this plan.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:30 pm
Eric nodded.
"Will do. I should probably learn some sort of self-defense."
He said idly, looking down at his hands.
"It could be useful to at least know how to keep from getting hit. I do know how to run though, I’m good at that."
He was more thinking out loud then actually talking to Jett. What came next could possibly be somewhat dangerous for him, but he wasn't scared. As always, he was optimistic. Things would turn out for the best in the end, guided there solely on the road paved in his good intentions. With Jett's help, he would do some good, possibly save some lives.
He smiled at Jett as the bus pulled to a worn down looking stop, a small overhang clearly tarnished with age. The door opened with a characteristic creak, and Eric turned to leave, but stopped for one moment.
"I will be calling you tonight; I’ll get some stuff done today. it might be late though, I haven’t slept yet and may need a nap before I get to work."
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:36 pm
Knowing self defense—and how to take a blow and land one—gave Jett an advantage in this situation; he didn’t have to worry about not knowing how to defend himself and while Eric had been speaking out loud, he had questioned offering his services in teaching him a few things. But that would require devotion and time Jett didn’t know he had to give. He merely nodded in understanding and leaned back in the chair he sat in. “That’s all right, I wasn’t planning on going to bed until late, anyway. Later,” he waved.
He flashed a small, almost friendly smile for a brief second—he seemed far more keen to spend time with Eric—or, at least keep in contact with him—than he had while in the Surrounding. Now that they had something on common—something Jett was growing to be very passionate about—it was very easy to want to find a reason to keep Eric around.
Though he kept a tame expression, inside he was very pleased with himself—very pleased with all of this. People to do his bidding? Yeah, that was pretty cool. He liked when things were working in his favor. And this?
Yeah. This was definitely working in his favor.
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Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:54 pm
Eric turned and stepped off the bus, and waved as the vehicle pulled away. He stood there for a moment, watching the shiny metal shape disappear around a corner. This was good, he was doing good.
He leaned against a wall for a moment, feeling the cold concrete through his shirt. It was still early, and the sun had not had time to warm the city up. He kind of liked the feel of the chilled concrete, it made him shiver but in a good way.
He pushed off the wall and walked down the street toward his home.
The Sky Watch. How would they identify themselves? Where would the meet? How would they actually protect Destiny City of the Senshi did something?
No answers came to him right away, but he was tired. He'd figure it out. And everything would work out in the end. It had to. It always had to.
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