EVA01 Studios, main break room....
Jotaro, Mizore, and the Newspaper Club minus Gin were looking over fan questions again from beyond the fourth wall, preparing themselves for the annual pre-holidays ritual.
"Is anyone else feeling kind of nostalgic?" Moka asked, looking around. "You know, since the quest is supposed to wrap up at the end of the year."
Yukari, wearing a Christmas sweater with a pink and cream zig-zag design and pink sweatpants on account of her normal Witch costume being at the dry cleaners (yes, even her giant hat), scowled over her cup of hot cocoa. "Eh, it's not like I get to do half as much as the rest of you here
or in the quest proper anyway, and the QM moderates my character way too much just because we're hosted on Sufficient Velocity. I mean, come
on! Our manga ran in
Shonen Jump for crying out loud, just like Kujo-senpai's! The only difference is we got published monthly instead of weekly!"
Tsukune, acknowledging and respecting the young girl's distress but not wanting to be insensitive about the reasons for it, gave her a headpat and a hair ruffle, effectively damning her to the adoptive-sister-zone her once and for all. "Well, remember how Moka used to get shorted out on screentime until the fans started calling for her to get more? Now that you've had a chance to air your grievances, I'm sure the QM will let you do more things in the sequel!"
Jotaro's facial expression revealed nothing of the inner conflict he felt over Yukari's desire to be thrown headfirst into life-or-death battles more frequently, especially since he's read further ahead in the script like an asshole and knows what the sequel quest is going to be about.
Mizore, for her part, smiled and snaked her arm around his to provide support. How she found the sheer strength of will to stop from dragging him under the mistletoe and kissing him unconscious, the world may never know for sure.
At that time, the door opened, and Kurumu bounced into the room wearing a tasteful-enough-for-PG13 Santa costume, with a small sack of envelopes hoisted over her shoulder! With a wink and a twirl, her first gift to the room was a lively smile. "Heya everyone! I've got the reader questions with me, so let's close this year out with a bang!"
Q: Kaworu Nagisa/Tabris. Kenshiro. Atsuko Natsume/Nuku Nuku. You three were the other main character options for this crossover quest, how do you think you would've gotten along with the Rosario cast? What do you think of the way Jotaro has handled things so far?
Q: Rosario cast, what are your thoughts on the other people you could've gotten instead of Jotaro?
"
Ooh," Kurumu cheered with a grin, "this year we get to do some alternate universe stuff!"
__________________
In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the 1990s....
After jamming his thumbs into yet another brigand's neck to make their head explode, Kenshiro turned away from the three-second carnage. Gazing through space and time to a universe he ultimately never appeared in, he evaluated the assorted R+J main characters on the other side of the split-screen camera feed.
"He was going to be a teacher, right?" Moka asked in thought.
"He's pretty cool," Mizore confessed with a nod.
Kurumu brought a hand to her cheek, faintly blushing. "I... kind of want to help him out. This feeling, it's almost like what I have for Tsukune every day!"
Jotaro remained silent, sensing the kindness and sorrow in the core of Ken's spirit. A bitter pang arose in the young Joestar's heart, wishing for a split-second that such a man as the one before him could have been his father instead.
Yukari, for her part, was unabashedly drooling over the shirtless wonder and making heart-eyes at him.
Kenshiro pierced through the cast with his gaze, and then his expression softened. Seeing the love and bonds between them all, as well as the sadness in their pasts and the strength gained from it, the Savior gave them a small smile. "You already know the most important lessons. Every one of you... has already passed."
[....hold on, even Yukari?!]
Kenshiro nodded to the question despite nobody voicing it, and then turned away to resume his never-ending quest. No matter what, he
will return to his love.
_______________
In the futuristic fortress city of Tokyo-3....
A glowing albino pretty boy sat in the air, levitating and sipping a cup of tea as a melancholy Beethoven song played in the background. Almost immediately, Moka stifled a gasp. "He's got similar taste in music to what
I do!" she excitedly whispered.
Tsukune, whose taste in music was mainstream as hell, abruptly felt insecure.
Kurumu nodded. "And with the white hair and red eyes, he almost looks like he could be Inner Moka's little brother."
Inside Moka's rosary seal, the other Moka briefly considered the notion of having a little brother, and found it slightly appealing. It would be an experience worth trying, anyway.
Yukari, remembering her manners, cleaned up her act and produced a pen and notepad. "Since his understanding of human morality and social mores would be tenuous at
most, hehehe...."
Mizore said what everyone else was thinking. "....Yukari, I really don't want to know what's going on inside your head."
Kaworu, or Tabris by his true name, looked upon the cast with a sad smile. "I dearly wish I could have gotten to know you all," he said. "If I could but make the choice to assist you, I would..."
For a moment, the image of a hundred-meter tall Giant of Light flickered behind and around him, howling in silent sorrow, until it vanished. "But even so," he continued, "I have faith in you all. Believe in yourselves."
Resting his chin in his palm, the figurative glow of his smile matched or exceeded the literal shine of his soul. "I am certain that you will all find love in the end."
Kurumu glanced at the fourth wall, and beyond it. "The author really likes to use chick-magnet and estrogen-bait characters as protagonists, doesn't he?"
[Guilty as charged.]
___________________
In yet another alternate universe version of Tokyo....
A cute pink-haired girl with metal antennae accessories casually tossed aside the collapsed skyscraper that had fallen on her, before blinking in confusion at the people on the other camera feed. "You all seem like fun people!"
Moka, Kurumu, and Yukari instantly went on guard, eyeing the crossover character with caution.
"She's got pink hair and super strength," Moka whispered worriedly.
"She's friendly and outgoing," Kurumu agreed, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Yukari cowered into Moka's side, for once not taking the chance to sexually harass the older girl. "She's got childlike innocence and charisma, but with a body that's actually attractive to the mainstream!" she wailed in despair.
Even Mizore gave the new guest a chilly reception. "Her body's cold to the touch," she accused.
It took Jotaro a few seconds to piece together their concern. "...you girls aren't
seriously thinking she's got all your charms combined into one?"
The girls
hissed in response, glaring venomous death at the oblivious girl on the other side. "Just look at the way Tsukune's looking at her!" cried a fearful Moka.
Jotaro did turn his gaze to the other male in the room, and indeed saw that Tsukune had a blissful smile on his face.
She's not looking at me like food or making me deal with complicated emotional problems I'm not prepared for! I can't believe it! A girl I could be regular friends with!
Jotaro, whose relationship insecurities were of a completely different sort to everyone else's in the room, could read Tsukune's emotions clearly without jumping to the wrong conclusion. With a grin
just large enough to caught with the mark one eyeball, he said, "I
doubt you have to worry that she'll steal away Tsukune from you."
Or me, he thought while squeezing Mizore's hand in a show of support and only slightly calming her down.
On catching the topic of gossip, Atsuko's metal antennae ornaments perked up. Clapping her hands in excitement, the girl's cheer would have been utterly infectious if not for the dread it inspired in everyone else. "Oh, oh! Are you a cat-brained robot too, Tsukune?! A tomcat?! I know this really cool place with lots of things to climb up and mice to chase meow! And Ryunosuke got me this really fun ball of yarn for my birthday, and and and --"
"Actually," Tsukune interrupted with an overwhelmed chuckle, "I'm a human."
Atsuko blinked, her now-revealed robotic antennae drooping as she processed what she'd just heard. "Not a cat?"
Tsukune shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. "Nope, not a cat. Jotaro-senpai's human, too."
Atsuko frowned for a moment, her whole body slumping with dejection, before she perked back up again. "Well," she said with a beaming smile and an extended hand, "at least we can still be friends, right?"
If someone had told Tsukune before Youkai Academy that he'd be weeping tears of relief
over a cute female friendzoning him, he would have kicked them in the face. As it was, he accepted the handshake in tearful joy. "I was starting to think I'd never find a girl or woman except Ms. Nekonome I could have a
completely normal, non-romantic friendship with!"
Hearing this made the other girls finally start to relax, and then Atsuko finally
actually put her attention on Jotaro, and leapt back hissing. On seeing his incredible resting bitchface and casually hostile body language, she could only think of one fitting descriptor! "Scratching post with an attitude..."
____________
Back at EVA01 Studios....
With a wavy camera effect that looked super cool but cost
way too much of the budget to actually describe properly, the cast were once again back in the break room as normal.
"...that was a thing," Tsukune eventually admitted.
Moka
hmmed in agreement, looking up at the ceiling with a small sense of wonder. "I wonder if we'll get to do more what-if scenarios like that in the actual quest canon someday, though?"
Jotaro shrugged, having read most of the script and notes for RoJo Part 2 and thus possessing insider information. "Outside of special events like this? I doubt it."
"Oh hey, looks like human family members that aren't Joestars get some focus this year!" Kurumu mused as she opened the next few envelopes.
_____________
The Aono Household, the living room of which looks completely ordinary and perfectly normal. From a single glance, it can be taken as fact that nothing extraordinary has ever happened here...
Q: Kōji and Kasumi Aono: What do you make of the situations your son has gotten into? What do you think of the friends he has made?
Koji blinked in confusion, glancing over his evening newspaper. "Situations?"
Chuckling, he leaned back into his really comfy chair. "Our son's just a normal kid going to a boarding school. If he were getting into any kind of
situations worth the euphemism," he said with a grin, "I'm sure our boy would tell us --" with that, he glanced to his aging-but-still-lovely wife "-- right honey?"
Kasumi chuckled, even as she worked the stove and mixed the curry she was fixing for dinner. "Of course he would!" she said with a beaming smile. "Although even if the percentage is skewed strangely and heavily towards girls, I'm glad he's making friends at his new school. They seem like such a kind and lively bunch, I'd love to meet them all!"
Absently watching the news in the next room, Kyouko nodded in agreement. "It
is strange for Tsukki to have so many girls around him."
Narrowing her eyes, she frowned in suspicion as her cousin-slash-big-sis maternal instincts flared. "
Really strange..."
______________________
A dark, unnamed club in New Orleans...
A man stands on the stage, playing a mellow tune on his saxophone. He is over six feet tall, with curly dark hair, and wearing a dapper blue suit. Where his son is a hulking mass of rippling muscle upon muscle, however, he is leaner, more...
elegantly framed.
Q: Sadao Kujo: Please tell us a little about yourself.
The man continued playing, seemingly basking in the silent respect and appreciation of his audience.
Q: How is your career as a jazz musician going? Will we ever see you on-screen in the quest?
His fingers continue dancing across the instrument without a care, effortlessly showcasing the kind of musical mastery that can only come from
decades of honing's one craft.
Q: Hypotehtically speaking, how would you react to Holly suffering from an illness with supernatural causes?
Abruptly, the music stops. There is no missed or flawed note; his fingers simply freeze in their exact positions.
The ironclad calm on his face is impossible to see though. But in his eyes, if one looks closely, they can see flickering emotions.
Alarm. Concern.
Comprehension. Fear. And then finally.... despair.
After another moment or two, in which the club patrons started growing worried and restless, he began playing a different tune. Desperate and sad, it sounded almost like a funeral march...
_________
EVA01 Studios, main break room...
Jotaro bristled, clenching his fists in rage. "Asked how he'd react if his own wife were dying, and the heartless son of a bitch doesn't even stop what he's doing..."
Moka blinked, having caught a glimpse of Sadao's eyes, and then glanced at Jotaro.
So I guess that's where he gets his facial expressions from, she thought but didn't quite have the courage to say.
Or rather, his lack of them... "I... I'm not sure
heartless is the right word."
Kurumu, who'd caught the same thing Moka had, crossed her arms in a huff. "S
pineless might be, though. Instead of rushing home to shower his woman with positive vibes, he just skips straight to mourning like she's already died?" Moderating her expression and tone as she turned to Jotaro, she sympathetically muttered, "I can see where you're not a fan, senpai."
Q: Rebecca Atsuno: what hobbies do you have outside the wrestling club? What complications are there living as a zombie? Are there any powers or medical procedures which could help?
Yukari blinked, "Who the hell is-"
A horrifying screech interrupted her, as the Zeppelin/Osbourne funeral dirge on crack began echoing through the entire building. The break room door rotted away and decayed to nothing, as the Wrestling Club Captain shambled into view, her face frozen in a manic scowl.
As the music died down, Yukari said what everyone was thinking. "...that door's not coming out of
my check."
Atsuno thrust a sheet of paper at Jotaro... and then gripped her spasming and twitching arm with her other hand to steady it. "Busy," was her only explanation.
Accepting her written answers without complaint, Jotaro took the sheet and allowed his budding rival to shamble off back to where she came from.
"'When I was alive, I used to enjoy flower arranging and pottery,'" he read aloud, "'but having my soul haphazardly shoved back into my still-rotting corpse makes any kind of delicate activity tear-inducingly frustrating. Most of my nerve endings are gone, so fine motor control is all but impossible. Sensations are also dulled, so grooming is also more difficult than expected.'"
Kurumu, reading a smaller-print section over Jotaro's elbow, added, "'And guys refuse to make out with me when they find out about the corrosive neurotoxins in my saliva.' ...gotta admit, I think I'd be emo too if I had to deal with that."
"...language sounds out of character," Mizore mused.
"She has to use her Stand to communicate normally," Jotaro recalled.
Yukari considered that, peering at the paper. "Betcha she wrote it with her Stand, too. Hands as unsteady as hers wouldn't have such neat penmanship."
Tsukune blinked, his face steadily turning white with horror. "Wait, she said 'still-rotting', but everything else was in present tense. Does that mean her body is
still falling apart?"
Jotaro considered the question. "She did seem a bit less together than the last time I saw her."
Moka gasped, hands flying to her mouth in shock. "Then... is she going to just keep decaying until she dies again?! That's
awful!"
Yukari frowned, glancing to the side. "...these are the kinds of atrocities magic and witchcraft can lead to if they're not used responsibly."
"Yeah, like if someone gets brain damage from constantly having washpans dumped on their head, right?"
Yukari flushed, throwing her now-empty mug at a grinning Kurumu and just barely missing her in the head. "THOSE ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STANDARDS OF BEHAVIOR AND YOU KNOW IT!"
Kurumu laughed, catching the little girl mid-lunge and trapping her in a playful headlock. "I know, I know, I was just breaking the tension. Now calm down, before I give you a noogie."
"Mokaaaa!" Yukari wailed. "Kurumu's bullying meeee!"
Giggling in spite of herself, Moka shook her index finger at the Succubus in question. "Come on now Kurumu, the next question is for you. Let Yukari go and answer it."
Q: Kurumu, since Succubus can cast powerful illusions upon others, can you detect illusions that are being cast upon you? If the answer is yes, is there some six sense that lets you detect illusions?
The buxom bluenette released Yukari as directed, and considered the question seriously for a moment. "I've never really
been subjected to illusions from someone else, so I don't know. I'd have to ask my mother about it later."
"As far as
my own illusions go," she said with a shrug that Tsukune and Moka couldn't help but notice, "I kind of see them as being overlayed on top of actual reality. Kind of like applying a filter in photoshop or some other editing program."
Being that this was 1989, nobody else had a fucking clue of what she was talking about, but rolled with it.
Q: Mizore, how big a wedding would you like?
Rolling her eyes, Mizore crossed her arms and scowled at the author.
[What?]
"It's been a good two or three times you've played bait-and-switch with that question," Tsukune allowed. "So I think Mizore's right to be skeptical of you bringing it out again."
Jotaro said nothing... but as Star Platinum manifested above him and cracked its knuckles threateningly, he really didn't need to.
[Go ahead and answer it, I'm not trolling anyone this time. I already promised the fans you'd get to this time, after all.]
Mizore sighed, and actually allowed herself to start thinking of it. A smile crept on her face, and her cheeks started turning slightly red. "...a small ceremony with our family and friends is all we really need, probably at a local shrine or church or something. Even without making a huge production out of it, it'll still be the third most important moment of my life."
Tsukune blinked. "You've been looking forward to marrying senpai for two or three years in audience time, and it still only ranks
third?"
Kurumu was on the edge of her seat. "What the heck is gonna top
that?"
Mizore's answer was both immediate, and in hindsight, expected. "Number two is the honeymone," she explained with a blushing smile, "and then number one comes nine months or so after that~"
"Last question we've got," Jotaro observed in an embarrassed and patently obvious attempt at changing the topic, "and it's for Moka."
Q: Outer Moka, since you share memories with Inner Moka, what are your favorite memories with your mother that you can recall prior to her disappearance? If you can't recall anything regarding your mother, then what were your favorite moments shared with your sisters before your mother's disappearance?
Moka blinked, before thankfully accepting the change of subject matter. "Actually, I only share the other Moka's memories from before the rosary seal was put on. After that, she can see glimpses of what I see and experience, but I don't remember anything at all of the times when she's active."
Frowning, she muttered, "...it's almost as if I don't even exist when the seal comes off."
Everyone else stared awkwardly, before Kurumu let out an uncomfortable laugh. "Well now, I'm sure
that isn't foreshadowing anything important..."
"Oh, but to answer the question," Moka perked up, "I really liked when Mother would read us bedtime stories. Gyokuro didn't like her daughters interacting with me or my mother very much, but when she was away on business sometimes Father would let us all sleep in the same bed together and Mother would sing us a lullaby!"
Frowning, Moka muttered, "How did it go again?"
Mizore blinked. "Impromptu concert?"
Yukari beamed with excitement. "Moka's got an incredible singing voice, you'll see for yourselves if she remembers the lullaby!"
Tsukune and Kurumu were also interested, and even Jotaro shifted his posture to more comfortably listen to her.
After several moments, Moka smiled, and closing her eyes, softly began to sing. "And so may love guide your way, through every last endless trial~; always tempt your fate with luck and a smile..."
[<-------to be continued in the quest proper. Merry Christmas...]
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