The Alternate Universe Meme

[misheard]

The Alternate Universe Meme

1. Comment with your character.
2. Others will reply with an AU idea.
3. Thread. Profit.

AUs can be any AU of any kind, but if you need ideas, I have this masterlist and this tumblr to get you started.

Comments

[embellishes]

[ Not thinking about it from his perspective, he says, and Hajime kicks her feet in response. It's not in frustration, no, but rather a certain sort of joy that slams into her. She remembers their conversation, a month after the fiasco involving the flower spirits. She remembers his reasons for prolonging his answer, the part of their communication where Akira conveyed that he didn't really know what his answer was or would be. But here, he talks about he and Hajime in distinct forms, she thinks, and she is ecstatic to chirp back. ]

That's because I'm not you, Akira!

[ Not matter how much they'd bonded, they were themselves. There was no new conglomerate of the two of them, just Hajime and Akira, a pair who had once been strangers that now bore matching scars on different parts of their bodies. It's true -- she isn't him. She doesn't know where he's parked his bike or what he looks like, even. You can't hide Akira in a crowd, she realizes: he stands out in a crowd. It isn't necessarily because he's unusual looking, though that's apart of it. Akira's height places him above many of the heads in the crowd, and Hajime decides that there's no way she'll miss him.

The fact Akira can see her means that he isn't far, but he isn't close, either. She thinks to possibly ask him to describe where it is that he's situated, but she realizes that he wouldn't make this so easy on her, either. It's a game, after all, with high stakes: he wants her to find him on her own. ]

Let's see, Akirakira can see me but I can't see him...

[ G-101 spins, floating still. A thought strikes her, and she pulls the phone away, but not before turning up the call volume, and putting him on speaker. ]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakiraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

[ Depending on how far away he is, she should be able to hear the echo from his end, she thinks ]

[furtherforward]

[From her spot up high, it's no small wonder that the people beneath her are but little specks with few defining features. But Hajime would be right if she looks for a head taller than the rest – at a solid 195cm, Akira has grown quite a bit taller than the average person.

She's not him, and that's just normal. What he expected her to do with that request is something smart, tactical, thoughtful, and Hajime doesn't let him down. She clicks at her phone and he wonders if she's hanging up all the way up there, but when she holds it away from her and calls out to him, it becomes clear what she's doing. What Hajime will hear is a distance just close enough for her voice to hit the speaker of his phone faintly, so she'll hear it from that end. This also means that her voice is loud enough to turn heads all around.

And faintly, from Akira's end, is the confusion of Tachikawa's citizens that surround the cyclist.]

"Gatchaman...? Did she just say Akira?"

"Look! It's Hajime!"

[The attention on Hajime, however, has Akira slinking back on reflex. He steps away from the crowd of people semi-frozen in their busy tracks, back toward the wall of a surrounding building where his bicycle is propped. And belatedly, he realizes he inadvertently isolated himself... Being mixed with the crowd was the most concealed place to be, wasn't it? The all-rounder groans, and his voice is more of a hiss than before – it seems he doesn't want the surrounding people to get the idea that he's on the phone with their beloved Gatchaman, now that he's realized they all know her and regard her fondly.

Because of course they do.]

Do you have to be so noisy?!

[...Akira thinks to point out that everybody's looking at her now, but somehow, he gets the feeling that she doesn't mind. And he, too, has grown used to audiences... But not off his bicycle and out of his element. At this rate, she'll spot him and come right down to him so that everybody sees who this Akira is – him! Guilty by association, and Akira feels all he can do is await whatever vomit-inducing scene comes next. Vomit-inducing, dizzying, heart-thudding, nerve-wracking... What is with this mess of sensations, anyway? Akira holds the phone away from his mouth so that he can catch a deep breath without it being too apparent. This doesn't scare him.

It just makes him feel. The moment is real around him, as vivid as a race taking place in a sea of sunflowers all facing the same direction, that exhilaration of the moment... That's what it is.]