route_1065 | We are anything but unremarkable

Entry tags:

We are anything but unremarkable

Who: Johan and Kay
Where: Goldenrod City
When: Thursday, September 30
Summary: Revenge of the Date.
Rating: PG-13, but since it's these two, who even knows if it'll get that high.
Log:

It was cold, and she was without her muffler, because Kay was now certain that one didn't wear mufflers on dates. And this wasn't a practice date, according to Johan-- which was something she'd been trying to understand ever since he'd asked her. Sure, they'd had fun on the first one, but that had been practice for 777 (and she was beginning to wonder if that would even happen), so what was this for?

Kay didn't know, but she didn't make a habit of dwelling on things that she didn't need to dwell on, and she wasn't about to start now. Fun with her friend was fun with her friend, and if fun meant letting her hair down (as Kaito had recommended) and actually finding a decent non-white dress (she'd learned) and potentially freezing, then she'd do it! This was but a minor trial of adversity!

... No, Kay, it was a date, not a challenge. She could picture Mr. Edgeworth shaking his head at his assistant's competitive mindset already.

Once again she stood outside, though the urge to return inside where it was at least twenty degrees warmer was growing stronger by the moment. Maybe she should have at least grabbed a jacket... not that this was going to bother Johan, having attended school in Glacier Central (darn him).

"Round Two, huh?" she muttered to herself, and stretched up on her toes. "This should be fun!"

And she meant it.

Leaving her man-hating Crobat behind in the inn would probably be of some help, too.

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"Like what?" Johan had to pause at that. Truth be told, he was dropping the tease just a little bit (he was starting to wonder, though, with how he was reacting to her reaction, if there had been all that much to begin with) but clearly she wanted more from him. Probably more on the lines of "Miss Beautiful Thief" he had to guess.

... Well, there was always the truth! It wasn't as if Miss Beautiful Thief was too much of a stretch, though Johan wondered if Miss was necessary instead of working Kay's name in there somehow. He tilted his head, still smiling, and finally opened his mouth to speak.

"I guess... Do you want it to be another title or just what I think?" Johan's expression began thoughtful for a moment, and he suddenly couldn't help but notice how close they were and what she was wearing and how... little that really mattered when, outside of this outfit, he'd seen her face and all of its different expressions. He'd seen her light up and laugh and smile and give him looks that filled him with confidence and, of course, her eyes when she was teasing him, and...

What was a word for that though? Looking even more thoughtful, Johan tilted his head and kept thinking.

... He'd just have to use more than one word! Suddenly gaining his smile, he leaned back towards Kay, grinning just a little, and finally began to speak.

"... You're a glowing, radia--"

DING

And there was the elevator.

At the sound of the chime, you may now exit the elevator and pretend that you weren't staring at your friend like he was way more than that.

It was sound advice, and Kay followed it immediately, almost stumbling as she turned to step out, but correcting her balance in the next split-second and straightening up. Part of her was tempted to strike a pose straight out of the Olympics and wait for the judges to announce their scores, but she desisted with only minor difficulty.

"Looks like the rest of the way is up to us," she said after a minute. Her grin was still the same, but she was thinking hard. She hadn't been serious, but did she really want him to finish what he'd been saying? She didn't see herself as particularly glowing or radiant, since the Yatagarasu operated in shadow, but...

... This was hurting her head.

Johan inexplicably felt like the breath had been knocked out of him as Kay nearly fell out of the elevator and out into the hall - an arm outstretched to grab her just in case she fell over. She righted herself not a moment later, though, and Johan withdrew his hand and slowly stepped from the elevator, even more confused now than he was before. Had something been about to happen...?

"Ah, yeah, you're right. It doesn't go all the way up," Johan replied almost blankly, leaning his head to the side before straightening it. Kay probably already knew that. He looked around the area and, seeing no one, looked back to Kay with his smile slowly returning to where it had been a few moments prior. "So... Guess we're in for a treasure hunt. For the stairs, that is."

Edited 2010-10-05 03:48 (UTC)

"A treasure hunt?"

It didn't take much. Just those words perked Kay up immediately, enough so that she could push whatever had just (or almost) happened to the back of her mind and settle back into her energetic self.

The girl stretched her arms over her head and went up on her toes, then looked around. "Okay, if I was a bunch of stairs, I'd be somewhere in the back. ... And maybe I'd cloaked in some kind of secret illusion or fake wall so no one would be able to find me, because at the top, there'd be the most valuable item!"

And then she stopped.

"... But yeah, let's check the back."

Johan was glad to see Kay (almost literally) perk up at the suggestion of a treasure hunt. He supposed, if anything, he really had gotten to know how she ticked since they'd been traveling together - not that it was... hard, per se, but for some reason he felt rather pleased at this revelation that he could turn her back on from being off like that. Though he supposed anyone could, really, but as long as she was getting turned back on, that was what counted, right? Right?

"Hehehe, who knows? Maybe there are Psychic types in here doing just that kind of thing! There could even be trick floors on the way...!" Johan added cheerfully, walking forward to snatch Kay's hand so they could walk along towards the back. "The only way we'll know for sure is if we check it out."

His hand was warm, she noticed. It wasn't something Kay had thought about all that often, especially when wearing gloves tended to hinder one's ability to feel it, but no decent thief allowed for fingerprints (and she thought they just LOOKED cool). However, her hand was free from that at the moment, so she could properly... enjoy it?

"Good point." Giving his hand a squeeze and deciding that holding hands was just fine, Kay set off on a quest for the stairs. They couldn't be that hard to locate, and well... if they were, she wasn't a truth-stealer for nothing! Hidden fireplace passages couldn't fool Mr. Edgeworth and his (self-proclaimed) assistant wouldn't be fooled by hidden anything, either! "Even if it's just the top, that's just as good! I can work with that."

Johan let Kay take the lead for now, instead following along and keeping an eye out for signs of some kind of staircase. However, instead of that, his attention kept straying back to their hands (Kay giving his a squeeze didn't help this) and wondering why he couldn't stop himself from drifting back to that. They held hands fairly frequently, but something still seemed different this time...

As he squeezed back, more from it being the natural reaction than anything, it hit him.

He could feel her hand. Not that he minded her gloves, they were part of what made Kay... well, Kay, after all, but this kind of thing was a rare chance. A chance he was realizing he was... kind of enjoying, and at that realization, he gave her another squeeze and continued on listening. And looking.

"Hehehe, I'm sure you can! I just hope I get to see whatever it is."

"What, is it your first time in here?" Kay asked curiously. It couldn't have been; the man down below seemed to have recognized him, but it could be possible that he hadn't gone any further up. Which was a shame, really, but not everyone loved heights with the same passion she did. (There was just no way to make a good entrance from the ground. It lost all its mystery and drama that way!)

She continued to look around, just as he did, and finally spotted a door, seamlessly fitted into the wall that she might have missed if she hadn't felt the faint whisper of a draft as she walked past. Puzzled, Kay stopped and held out her free hand to test the wall. She was rewarded when the "wall" swung open, the newly open door revealing the very stairs they'd been searching for. In typical fashion--

"Stairs get!"

"Just not this far up is all..." And that was all Johan was going to say about that particular adventure. Kay had already seen a good deal of it broadcasted on the network anyway, she didn't need to know more than she already did. "Besides, I had other things to be thinking about then, remember? I wanted to get back to you as soon as I could."

Johan grinned at Kay's declaration, almost expecting her to thrust a hand into the air as a sign of victory or something like that. Maybe that was on the way. In the meantime, though, he stepped forward to check out the stairs - fairly fancy looking, and it looked like they even went all the way down to the lower floors as well. Not bad at all.

... And maybe it was a little soon, but as he glanced at Kay's victorious look, Johan decided that it was just a good time as any.

"Nice job, Miss Beautiful Thief! I knew you could do it!"

Was he going to make a habit out of it now? Kay grinned at the thought, more relaxed about it than she'd been earlier, and nodded at her friend. "It's not exactly the truth, but I knew all of that investigational work would pay off one day!"

Never mind that when Edgeworth had left her and Gumshoe to investigate with Ambassador Palaeno, they'd all gotten incredibly sidetracked-- but hey, at least it'd been fun, which was something her prosecutor friend really needed to learn about one of these days.

"So, here we go!" She was clearly raring to go from her words alone, not even considering how buoyant she looked. "It looks like we've got a long way to go, but at least we're going!"

"Hehe, what are you talking about?" Johan grinned confidently, patting his chest with his free arm in a rather dramatic fashion as he did. "No way is too long a way for the two of us to go, even the whole staircase from top to bottom! We could definitely do it!"

The scary thing perhaps wasn't the fact that he was suggesting they could really go from the top to the bottom all on their own, but it was the fact that for all his honesty and even sometimes simpleness, he really believed that.

"Right! This is just one small step for... us, I suppose, and a giant leap for raven and dragon-kind!"

And with that, Johan, hand still holding onto Kay's, began his ascending of the stairs.

"Are we astronauts now?" It had never been on Kay's list of possible careers while growing up, but then again, she'd had things like Ninja and HERO OF JUSTICE (and dinosaur once). She'd liked the idea of helping out on Earth, where there were more people who actually needed to be protected.

"Because I think I'd take being a thief over that," she added breezily, and hopped a step, pulling Johan with her as she aimed for another one. If she kept that up, her legs would probably be sore by the time they'd completely ascended every stair, but at least she was having fun with it.

"Eh? Astronauts?" Johan blinked - despite his butchering of a quote having come from an astronaut, his mind had already traveling beyond that to places with... well, dragons and ravens. Space was more Juudai's forte anyway. Grinning, though, he kept up with Kay's pace and moved along after her. "Well, we could be both...! We could steal some meteors, maybe a star or two..."

Then, teasingly, he added. "If you keep that up, I may need to carry you back down."

That earned a laugh from her, just imagining the intricate process of star-stealing. And there were no prosecutors to wag their fingers at her and explain that stars were giant fiery balls of gas and not at all the shiny twinkly things that were, in her opinion, much prettier.

Kay focused on Johan's second comment, though, hopping up another stair before she turned her head to grin at him. "It wouldn't be much of a date if I couldn't walk, huh? But this isn't too bad, I promise!"

"Hey, you managed last time!" Johan cheerfully reminded her, returning her grin in full before hopping up one and then another stair to pull himself in front of her, before turning back to take her position of looking behind to grin. "At least for part of it, anyway."

Johan wasn't planning on pushing it anyway, but the subject really seemed to get Kay fired up sometimes, so why not? They didn't have anything better to do while they were stair climbing anyway. "But it's good you can handle it! ... For now."

At the invoked memory of practically snuggling in her friend's arms, Kay faltered in her leaping. It wasn't anything too noticeable, thankfully, but just thinking about that part made her face grow hot AGAIN.

"For now and forever," she insisted, and took another hop. "I can handle anything anyone throws at me!"

Luckily for Kay, Johan had just turned away to take another step up, thus he missed the quick flush of her cheeks that surely would have egged him on further to some degree or another. Remembering that part had him in fairly good spirits, however, so he continued his climbing, keeping sure to not go too far as he was still holding onto Kay's hand.

"You might want to be careful what you wish for!" Johan warned, sounding almost serious. Still grinning, though now not facing her, he continued. "Someone might try to throw a Pokeball at you someday! Then what would you do?"

"Duck," she said immediately. Followed by a more thoughtful "Or steal it, maybe. It's not like I'm a Pokémon, so they wouldn't be able to catch me with it, and if they're throwing it at me in the first place, that's as good as handing it over! The perfect theft!"

Except "handing it over" wasn't "being stolen from", but she wasn't too interested in specifics just then. If anything, she was more focused on getting up the seemingly-neverending spiral of stairs.

... Well that hadn't been anywhere near where Johan had been planning to go with that remark, but that was probably for the best. At least one of the two of them was thinking a little before they opened there mouth - for some reason, Johan was finding things like that coming out a lot faster and with less thought than they might have normally. Weird.

"Is that really perfect?" Johan mused, hopping up another two steps and wondering just how many floors they'd gone up already. "I mean, I could think of a few ways to catch you."

At least there should only be another flight or two before they got there.

Kay raised an eyebrow at her friend, taking the same two steps he just had, but with more of a spring to her movement. She'd have to content her inevitably tired legs with the fact that going down was bound to be loads easier than it was going up. She settled for one step on the next one, though. This was only their first stop, not their last, and she didn't want sore legs halfway through the date. She was pretty sure that was bad protocol in some way, shape, or form.

"I don't know about thaaat," she drawled. "I don't think any kind of capture idea you could come up with could cage this bird."

"Either you're underestimating me..." Johan began, turning back to shoot her a wink as he turned a corner and continued up another step. Ahead of them was one final set of stairs, and beyond that, a simple door - beyond which surely was their goal. "Or you're overestimating yourself-- And both would just be a dangerous combination, don't you think? ... Not that I'd ever want to cage you, hehe."

And with that out of the way, Johan let go of Kay's hand and began to pick up speed - one last thing in mind.

"Race you to the door!"

"I'm not," Kay began indignantly, but the rest of her protestation once again went unsaid when Johan... was Johan and sped up. Of course. Kicking herself for having let him get a surprise headstart, she only stood there for a few seconds before she was racing after him.

"It's not a race if you cheat from the beginning!" she called out, but she didn't seem to mind the little challenge from the grin in her voice. He did tend to do things without any warning, but she couldn't truthfully say that she didn't. Maybe that was one reason they got along so well.

"Call it a trap card!" Johan called after her, a matching grin not only in his voice but, of course, still on his face as always. He wasn't done yet though, as he raced up the stairs he was recalling previous similar circumstances and conversations, albeit ones in reverse, and his grin began to widen. He'd been waiting for a chance like this. "Or call it my thief's training starting to pay off!"

And with that, he gave his all towards hitting that door before she could.

Imitation was the highest form of flattery, wasn't it? Kay knew how familiar it sounded the instant it left Johan's mouth, but that didn't prevent her from grimacing good-naturedly. There was a sense of pride in her friend, too, of course; as her partner, he really was improving.

Unfortunately, that improvement meant she was probably going to lose, and lose she did-- but at least it wasn't because she hadn't given it her all.

Her all just kind of translated to attempting to leap three stairs and tripping over the second one, that was all.

Victory was in sight - as a matter of fact, victory was a few inches from his grasp. Just two more steps, now one, and it would be his--

... And then came the sound of Kay toppling over the stairs behind him, which lead to the rather comical image of him dramatically taking the last step, his hand just brushing the edge of the door, and his head slooooooowly turning around to see what had happened. It was almost as if the movement would make a creaking noise.

And for a second, he just stared. But it was just for a second, and then he promptly let out a yelp and moved down the stairs to check on his partner.

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