theattic | Weird-looking, half blind, spook wrangling world-walkers that smoke.

JW straightened back up, still puffing, not yet realizing that he'd been Caught. "Well I had to make sure. You did blind yourself an hour ago." Surprised by Ginko's sudden question he just shrugged. "Sure?"

"Believe it or not, we do have rust in Japan."

He nodded, still not looking totally convinced that nothing was wrong. "You look kind of tired, is all."

JW made a face.

Okay, Ginko had him there. He decided to find something else to look at, like the half destroyed bird's nest above them.

"It's been a long day. You walk between worlds often? Takes it outta ya. C'mon, you aint seen nothin' yet."

He waved for Ginko to follow and started puffing up the ridge. Not far away was a cow pond and a less dilapidated house.

Ginko raised an eyebrow, but he left it alone. For now.

He followed behind JW with relative ease, taking in the scenery in silence until JW pointed something out - or until something struck him as especially odd. At least he was pretty used to rural areas, even if this one wasn't quite what he was accustomed to.

Suddenly their wandering through the woods emptied them out onto a paved road with faded paint down the middle. JW leaned out of the brush not unlike an actual deer and looked both ways. A distant hiss grew into a growl and in a rush of wind, a pale blue pickup rattled past and was gone. With the coast clear, he jumped out onto the asphalt and motioned for Ginko to follow.

"The house isn't far now. We just gotta cut through a pasture and climb a hill."

When JW stepped onto the road, Ginko did not follow him. This probably had to do with the fact that Ginko was standing, frozen with startled fear, a couple feet back from the road, having jumped back when the TERRIFYING BLUE MACHINE drove past and not moved since.

"What was that?!"

When JW noticed his white-haired shadow wasn't behind him, he turned, standing in the center of the road.

"A truck--one of those machines I was telling you about. They stay on the roads, so don't worry about it."

He failed to inform Ginko about four-wheelers.

"Then why are you standing in the road?!"

He kind of looked like he was expecting another one to come out of nowhere at any second.

JW blinked back at Ginko. He still had so much to explain.

"You can hear them coming. It's okay, I promise!" He offered the other man an encouraging grin and spread his arms there in the road as if INVITING DEATH ON WHEELS TO COME. But none did.

Ginko winced a little when JW spread his arms out, then, when no metal hell machines appeared to flatten him, took a deep breath and hurried across the road, his hands still shoved deep in his pockets.

He did not like this.

When Ginko met with him, JW led him across the ditch and up the incline. Through a thin band of trees, a grassy pasture fenced in hotwire opened. It was full of dozy black cows who didn't so much as bat an eye at them. JW climbed up a lightning blasted tree and hopped into the pasture.

"Don't touch the wires."

There were lots of things you weren't supposed to touch in the future.

Ginko climbed up after him, somewhat awkwardly thanks to the weight of his pack. He frowned slightly at the warning then jumped down after JW, grunting and stumbling a little when he landed. He hoped he had added enough cushioning for his supplies.

"Why not?"

"Hotwire. It'll shock the crap out of you." JW jabbed Ginko's shoulder with a finger. "Not really sure why this farmer bothers, the cows'll lean across it to get at thistles and don't act like they even feel it. But it'll hurt us. I'll show you the way back over when you want to go home."

"Got it." He got... part of that. He would just keep following JW while continuing to ask A MILLION QUESTIONS. "How does it do that?"

Worry not, Ginko, for every question fed JW's ego.

"Electricity! It's what this world runs on. Even the fan I showed you runs on electricity...but it's a lot harder to hurt yourself with it than with that fence."

Dozens of cows passed them by. JW wove his way around cow pies with practiced ease (some of them may as well be landmarks at this point) and pointed out which ponds actually had fish in them. The world sloped upwards, yellow and brown, and once they reached the top of the hill, another tree line greeted them, guarded by that devil wire. JW led Ginko to a place where a tree had fallen during the previous winter and squashed the fence at the corner. THis is what they used to climb but the world just kept tilting upward. JW was not joking when he said he lived on a hill.

Soon enough though, a structure became visible. It was brown, two stories high with a jungle of a back yard. The porch was decorated in junk JW had managed to push outside over the years, a couple of chairs, and even a decorative animal skull or two. One window had been boarded up and if you didn't know to look for the little signs of life like the still clean novelty GET LOST welcome mat or the unlit Christmas lights rounding the porch roof, you would think it was abandoned.

The push mower that belonged to the house's original owner lay half hidden near a bird bath. On either side of the house sat two other houses. One was squat and white and parted from JW's by a gappy, rain-rotted fence. The other was a three story mansion that glistened in the sun and a towering white-washed fence blocked the lower windows from JW's shack.

The antlered man sent a glare the mansions way before climbing those last long feet up onto the porch and tugging open the storm door. He was wheezing and puffing again and the aggressively yellow 70's kitchen was a sight for sore eyes.

"Home sweet home."

All the way up the hill, Ginko kept casting glances around at everything around them - the apparently dangerous fences, the strange architecture of JW's house and the others around it. He followed JW inside, comparatively unaffected by the climb, and blinked a couple times at the sudden onslaught of yellow.

"...Huh."

He really did not know what to make of this, except that there was a lot of stuff in here that he could only really guess at the function of.

"Just put yer whatever wherehever." JW dragged a chair away from the kitchen table and sank into it. Now that the thrill of 'getting away' with sneaking Ginko from one timeline to another had faded, he was winded and a little shaky. Still grinning though as he watched Ginko explore with his eyes.

The kitchen was small and, as previously described, very very yellow. And lived in. Pots and pans and canisters and boxes of ingredients crowded the counter tops along with a coffee-maker, a microwave, and a toaster of questionable disrepair. A squat fridge sat in the corner and hummed to itself.

And then there were the mushi.

The house was smattered with small, semi-transparent harmless ones, but there were two slug-shaped mushi in the upper most corner of the kitchen that fed off anxieties. They were very fat.

Ginko stayed by the door for a moment, still looking around as he slipped off his shoes, leaving them and his box just outside the door - he vaguely noticed the JW didn't remove his shoes, but... force of habit and all that.

He made a mental note to ask about... basically all the appliances later. But first, there was a more pressing issue. He waved away a couple of the mushi floating through the air as he wandered toward the corner where the slug mushi sat. "...Yeah, you've got mushi in here, alright."

Once Ginko started fanning the air, JW leaned up from slumping against the back of his chair. It was still so weird, even in his own home, to be the one who couldn't see the Weird. He patted down that jealous little flame and watched Ginko's gaze.

"Yeah...? Are they, ah. Good?"

WERE THEY GOING TO EAT HIS SKIN IN THE NIGHT?

"They're not dangerous. But it's not really a good sign that they're here."

He tilted his head up to examine the mushi on the wall; they were a little high up to reach, but it wasn't like they really needed to be removed. "Would you say you're... stressed or nervous a lot?"

JW continued trying in vain to see the mushi and squinted so hard at the ceiling that his forehead started to hurt.

At Ginko's question, JW hesitated. It wasn't a secret that he was under a lot of stress--being sick, bills, the whole Town Hero thing. But being nervous wasn't something he wanted to admit to. "Why? Do the mushi creep into houses and give off bad vibes?"

"No. More like the opposite, in this case."

He pointed up at the corner, as if there were any doubt that he was looking at something up there. "There are mushi here that feed off anxiety - stress, fear, especially in combination. From the look of it, they're doing pretty well for themselves here."

James made A Face. Great, now he had invisible things in his house ratting him out. It was worse than Deuteronomy. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair again.

"I've got a bad back, gives me grief."

"Hm." That's all he's saying in response to that. If JW doesn't want to tell him, pushing the issue won't help.

Ginko stepped away from the wall, turning back to JW. "Well, in any case, you'll be glad to hear there's nothing in here that needs to be removed. Just a few common, harmless types."

"Well that's good." He fumbled with the scarf around his neck before leaving it be and getting up. "Want some coffee?"

He went ahead and started making himself some, dragging the coffee maker out of its corner and opening one of the cabinets to dig for the canister. As he worked, he gestured to various things in the kitchen.

"That there is the heat-em-up." A microwave. "And that's the cool-em-down." The fridge. "And...well that's an oven, you know what an oven is."

Something click click clacked on the hardwood in the next room.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject