#MEET THE BROTHERS SEN 8D MWAHAH

[vindicta-reliquiae]

"Drifting again, is she?" One of the ladies posed the question at a familiar couple duo sitting nearby, downing their soda.

Kaga grinned, resting his head against the taller man's shoulder. "No ma'am, she's been around for close to a couple of weeks or so now. Just the usual trips to see her sister and nephews."

"Of course if you wanna be technical it's her nephew's husband, but y'know how Ryuko is with those two, even if she's not often here." Kotetsu then cracked another can for himself.

The ladies only chuckled as the older of them (the same person asking) sighed. "She's a good girl, that Ryuko. I don't blame her for her choices really, just hopin' the heavens would be kinder to her these days, y'know?"

Idle prattle between the ladies and the two men. It's the usual crowd around these parts, nothing too out of the ordinary. But slowly they started to pick up whispers and murmurs around them, of a strange man in a trenchcoat, of red and navy blue, and a painful-looking scar over his right eye, asking around about someone...

"--blue eyes, bright red streak in her hair--"

Hold on. Doesn't that sound like--

"You mean the lady that stayed uphill at Higashiizu with her brothers? Yeah she's around sometimes! Now what was her name again--oi! Mitsuki! What's her name again? That pretty girl that always comes here with the boys on their bikes?"

The lady earlier called out. "Choki, you bean! You know her already! It's Ryuko!"

"Ah yeah! Ryuko!"

Almost instantly, both Kaga and Kotetsu tensed up. "Tetsu...!"

"Who in the--why is he looking for Ryuko??"

It took him a lot of trial and error. Even after he finally made his way back to Japan and the sorta familiar regions, it turned out that no one really knew the name of the girl that saved the world - most seemed to have forgotten about the whole ordeal entirely, in fact. Knowing how well Ryuko dealt with unwanted attention (bad), that was probably by choice. But left him with frustratingly little threads to follow.

That is, until someone sort of seemed to recognize her description and, after eyeing him suspiciously from head to toe (had he looked that bad?!), advised him to come to this place called Izu.

Which was a whole province and then a city of the same name inside that province, apparently. And sporadically full of tourists, at that. People. Lots of people. Made him a bit anxious - he still needed to remind himself he couldn't be accidentally stepped on anymore. But more importantly, he was still looking for one person. What's the expression? A needle in a haystack.

So he did what he's been doing this whole time - he approached the nearest vendor, he did not forget to bow with a greeting, 'cause that's what was polite for human-bodied people to do, and he just...asked.

"Excuse me, very sorry to bother you, you didn't happen to see a young woman around these parts, about this height, blue eyes, bright red streak in her hair, like mine?" He was still talking louder than strictly necessary, just in case anyone ever had trouble hearing him again.

(@vindicta-reliquiae)