(no subject)

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

" 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,/If your Snark be a Boojum! For then/You will softly and suddenly..." the Cheshire Cat recites, breaking off when it notices it has company. It's sunning itself, draped belly-up over a parapet of the castle, but with an unsettling upside down smile it vanishes and then reappears on the bridge, just to one side of where the transformation took place.

Katou lifts his head a little when he hears someone talking. He had thought death was going to be much quieter than this. He’s bandaged and his head’s bleeding, his leather clothes ripped pretty much to shreds, and his biomechanical arm is laying at his side, but it seems as though he has enough energy to look around a little.

"Well, h-hi there!" says a squeaky voice. Mickey, beaming, is coming up the bridge from the direction of the central plaza. "It's great to see you again! And isn't it a beautiful day!" He draws in a breath and seems to be a millisecond from zipadee-doo-dahing when the castle's portcullis rattles slightly and drops half an inch. He glances over his shoulder. "Cut it out, fellas! Just a minute..." He pats his newly appeared pockets.

Katou jumps a little when he hears Mickey’s voice, and then turns. There’s a memory tugging from the back of his mind, and then he realizes it’s Mickey mouse. “To see me again?” Katou asks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.” He frowns a little, realizing that he can’t really remember much of anything. “Have I?”

"If you were a book," asks the Cheshire Cat, apparently apropos nothing, "what book would you be?"

Katou can’t help but laugh at that a little bit. “I don’t really read,” he answers. He looks at the cat, frowns a little trying to place it, and then shrugs. “Looks like Alice in Wonderland right now, don’t it?”

Mickey has extracted his notebook, and clears his throat. "'Boxers or briefs?'" he reads aloud, and promptly blushes redder than a fire truck.

“Nothing,” Katou says, raising his eyebrow. “Listen, I thought you was a child’s cartoon character. Is that really appropriate?”

"Here's another," says Mickey. "List three things you'd do if you ruled the world."

Katou closes his eyes and tilts his head back so it’s facing the sun. He didn’t think he’d ever see it again. He was given the choice of reincarnation, and he chose to pass it up. He remembers that, strangely enough, despite the fact that he doesn’t even remember his own name.

“I’d make everyone be happy,” he says, because that is Se-chan’s dream, and Katou’s only dream right now is to let Se-chan’s dreams come true. “And I’d make incest legal, I guess. I don’t really know what else. And I’d make it so I didn’t have to go to school no more, and I wouldn’t give Kira back his CD.”

The Cat's eyes seem to be wandering in opposite directions. It says, "Is reality best described as (a) an absolute, not reducible to the sum of its parts, (b) the material or phenomenal world, as presented to us through our experiences, (c) fundamentally unknowable, (d) all of the above - please elaborate - or (e) fish?"

Katou pauses for a moment, seriously considering the question. “I don’t’ know what none of that means,” he answers after a while. “And I’m sure it’s not just because of the head injury or the fact that I can’t remember nothing. So I’m gonna say fish.”

Mickey raises one white-gloved hand as though measuring his own height. "Are you tall enough to go on this ride?"

Katou looks up at Mickey’s hand, then snorts. “What ride? Whatever, it don’t matter. I’m sure if I could stand I would be.”


((Katou, this time from post series. Meaning he's somewhat different than how he was before, and he's not going to remember anything that had ever happened in the park.

The shape Katou's in right now is something like this, please excuse the text on there, I don't have a clean copy on me right now.

To see how his biomechanical arm attaches to the rest of his body, check out here

Comments

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"Really?" he said. "He's here in the park. Over there," he said, pointing to Kira.

Katou laughed. "I don't know, I think if I had super powers I'd probably rob a few gas stations or something. Buy myself a house, maybe a cutie who'd clean for me and walk around in a french maid out..." He blushed a little, thinking of Doll, and then scowled. "Anyway, how does being a superhero pay?"

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"I-it pays in the knowledge that you're doing the right thing?" He shook his head. "Man, that sounds lame even to me. Okay, it doesn't pay a cent, in fact it costs a fortune in damaged costume repairs, and even if girls do love the whole superhero thing, that just makes it worse because you can't tell any of them."

He grinned. "But trust me, I make sure being a bad guy doesn't pay either. And in all seriousness-- some extra cash sounds great, but when metahumans start robbing places, people tend to get hurt. Even if they don't mean it. Not worth it. Not even the bit about the girls in french maid outfits, sorry as I am to admit it. Not to mention the whole part where Batman yells at you," he sighed. "Think I'd rather avoid that."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

Katou laughed. "That's such a corny thing to say," he muttered. He blinked. "Wait, Batman yelling at you?"

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Heh, well, superhero. Corny speeches are just all in a day's work, yaknow?" He laughed. "Yeah. Fortunately he seems to like me, so he's just regular scary at me, but I've seen him full on terrifying before. Not. worth it. Though honestly, if I were a supervillain, the one I'd really be afraid of is my pops."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

Katou shook his head. "Wait," he said. "Go back. Why are you talking about Batman like he's real?"

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"...Cause he is?" Virgil said. "You know, tall, bat costume, likes lurking in shadows, saves the world all the time? You can't miss him."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, I know him," said Katou. "But he's like, a cartoon/comic book character." He frowned. "...You're not crazy are you?" He finally finished cleaning his wounds, and then got around to bandaging them.

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Noooo," Virgil said. "He's pretty real. In my world at least." Of course, if there were people from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon, then that meant his world could be fictional too...

But Tim and Kon weren't from his world, and they knew Batman was real. Unless they really were all comic book characters, and he'd been retconned or something. But there was no way they'd retcon a superhero as awesome as him. Maybe he just came from later in continuity.

"Look, you're sure? Look, if Batman's fictional, you'd know stuff about him no one else would know, right?" He lowered his voice. "Like his secret identity?"

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"In your world?" Katou asked. Of course, his world didn't have superheroes flying around...

"Bruce Wayne, everyone knows that."

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Nooooo they don't. You could probably count on one hand the number of people who know that. Shit." He took a deep breath. "Okay, you just got here so you don't know, but fyi? There's loads of fictional people running around, like Boba Fett and Pikachu and Harry Potter wizards and stuff. Um, and apparently me. So if you meet anyone else fictional, you should probably keep it to yourself."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"Boba Fett?" Katou asked, looking quite excited about this. "Wait, Pikachu? What the fuck, we get a badass superhero, Boba Fett, and Pikachu?"

He blinked. "Uh... I'm sorry about you being fictional..." he muttered, rubbing the back of his head.

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Hey, nothing wrong with Pikachu! I'm pretty partial to electric attacks myself," he grinned. "Oh, but Batman isn't here. Superboy is, though, he's pretty cool."

"And no worries," he said. "It's kind of a shock, but I guess it's sort of cool when you think about it. I mean, I always wanted to be a comic book character when I was a kid, so there ya go. Oh, hey, any idea who plays me in the Static movie? I was kinda thinking Will Smith would be good, but I don't know if he has the range..."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"I didn't say Batman was here," Katou said. "And Superboy? You mean like, the young Superman?"

He blinked. "Static movie? Uhm... I can't say I've ever heard of it. It might be an American thing."

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Oh, but you said-- Oh!" You couldn't really blame Virgil for being slow on the uptake. Partially due to his status as skinny dork and bully magnet and yet unchanged even as a superhero (perhaps because of all the puns), Virgil had never been called 'badass' in his life. "Heh. Thanks. And nah, I think he's more like a clone or a sidekick or something. Never heard of him before showing here either."

"Oh," Virgil said, somewhat disappointed. "Yeah, probably. Where you from, then?"

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"Japan," Katou said. "I was intending to move to America later, but it never happened."

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Yeah?" he said. "Well, Japan's cool. You get all the best martial arts movies before we do! That's gotta mean something. I guess if you're in the middle of a war, that's not so great." He frowned. "Hey, what year are you from? I don't think Japan's been in a war since the 1940s. Unless that's just the fictional history of my fiction world," he said cheerfully. "History class has never seemed less relevant."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

Katou shook his head. "No, Japan hasn't been in a war in a long time," he said. "I don't know when, I skipped a lot of school. But I was in a war between Heaven and Hell and Deeper Hell, but some of Heaven was on the Hell team, and everyone was against God."

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"...sounds like the plot of some crazy anime or something," Virgil remarked, and then did a mental facepalm. "Sorry. It's just-- Deeper Hell and massive wars against God fought in Japan and all that? None of that was exactly covered in Sunday school."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

Katou blinked, then shrugged. "You're apparently from a comic, who says I'm not from an anime." He frowned. "It would actually make a lot of sense, now that I think about it."

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"Hey, maybe everyone is from something or other. Who knows." He grinned. "Though I bet I'm from a cartoon, not a comic. Considering the amount of girls I know who have been horribly horribly murdered and all. Though I gotta say, that whole Richie getting shot thing is a little dark for TV."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

Katou laughed. "Maybe," he said. He blinked. "Really, how many girls do you know that've been murdered?" Katou's from Japan, his cartoons consist quite a lot of people getting horribly murdered. "Who's Richie?"

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

"None," Virgil said. "Uh, well, one I guess. But that's backstoryish, so I can see how it'd get past the censors." His expression probably indicated that this was not something he wanted to go into right now. Virgil hadn't yet thought about what his fictional status might mean for his religious beliefs but it probably wasn't good. Which meant talking to mom wasn't anything more than a literary device.

"Oh, Richie is this guy I know." He paused. "Eh, if you know who Batman is, I guess it doesn't matter. He's my best friend. But you wouldn't mind keeping quiet about that, would ya? He's technically not my best friend as Static, see."

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"Oh?" he said. He blinked. He was possibly going to know a real live superheroes secret identity. "So, whose best friend is he, then?"

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

Well, no. He was possibly going to know a superhero who was as fictional as Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent's secret identity.

He snorted. "Hey, it's still a secret! Kind of. Eh, people in my own world know it, so whatever. Mild-mannered Virgil Hawkins, if that means anything to you. And yeah. My mom was fond of Roman poets. Don't ask about the middle name."

He paused, and then grinned. "Hey, that felt kind of good. That whole secret identity thing gets to you after a while, ya know? Like you want to tell everyone 'check me out, I'm a superhero, how cool is that' but you only get to be cool with the mask on, and then it's back to being a skinny teenager with a comic book obsession who can't get a girlfriend."

He frowned. "Not that I can't get a girlfriend. Cause I totally have one. Sort of." Well, not at all. But almost!

[katoustheshit.livejournal.com]

"So you're like, Peter Parker, only not a spider?" he asked, grinning. "Huh, go figure." He frowned. "I mean, not that I know anyone named Peter Parker, or if they're a superhero that's like a spider or anything or anything..." he just shouldn't go blurting out people's secret identities, should he? The might come and beat him up.

He shorted at the girlfriend thing. "You know," he said. "Girlfriends really aren't all they're cracked up to be, be glad you can't get one, even if you totally sort of have one already."