"Yeesh, how gruff. Then again, I'd be gruff, too, if I looked like a B-movie horror set. Now then..."
Young Beckham set the rag down, his eyes narrowing as he inspected the current state of his counters. While he would make sure to help out his (admittedly reluctant) ailing pal, it wouldn't take that long for him to make sure he did his work correctly.
After all, he was undoubtedly pissed off after one of his endearing customers decided to...stain...his beloved place of business. A stain on his property was close on the list of top 5 things not to do in Caes Patrick, so maybe that guy was a little too sloshed for his own good.
(Nope...no stains. And that guy won't be able to make a new one...hur hur hur...)
(What the fuck is wrong with his face?!)
The eerie, contorted smiling maw that appeared on Young Beckham's face was indeed quite conspicuous. Because, you know. It actually happened...
It seems like some people think the changes in their expressions are all in their heads. Divorced from reality, they get caught up in their own little worlds... but that isn't necessarily good or bad. It just depends on the context.
This was not a good context.
Young Beckham suddenly remembered that he had an injured patient to tend to. One that was injured in every conceivable sense of the word...but he couldn't know that.
"Haha, sorry. Just had to inspect this place for a bit. Come on up!"
He swiftly exited the side door barring off the alcoholic contents on the shelf behind him, gesturing for Muho to follow without even bothering to look back. Plodding up the stairs with casual yet admittedly loud steps, the sound produced shook Muho's ear canals like thunder.
(Damn...I should've been a bum today. Or at least written my will...)
Grumbling mentally, Muho followed his sketchy savior up the steps around the kitchen doorway.
Young Beckham led him to a simple room with only white around. It looked a bit like a hospital ward; the drapes hung about silky, and even a heart monitor was in a corner of the room. The bed had a mattress and unadorned white sheets...if it wasn't for the old specks of red, Muho would've felt just the tiniest bit comfortable.
"Go on, sit. I won't bite ya."
Young Beckham made a disarming smile as he calmly gestured, which Muho did in order not to piss him off. The tall man clapped and cheered, sending Muho a thumbs-up.
(This feels like a parent watching their kid get a medal at a science fair...in kindergarten...)
Young Beckham stood right in front of Muho, making sure to unhurriedly demonstrate himself placing his hands behind his back. His eyes lit up, glowing in a bright incandescent neon...and the once standard shape underwent tremendous changes.
His pupils morphed into the pattern of an eye, a tiny teardrop falling from each individual pupil. It was an eye within an eye, and Muho felt as if he was locked underneath the gaze of someone who could see through the constraints of the mind itself.
Young Beckham's Particularity. The Gaze of Knowing Masks.
He didn't like to use this, personally. Everyone has a story to tell, and it's the mouth's job to relay it. It would be a massive breach of privacy if he was going to go peer at everyone's secrets, no matter how deep or shallow he dived. Due to this mindset, he lost a lot of opportunities in his life...even one that would help reduce the symptoms of his own disease.
Getting expelled from a Strange Academy didn't help either. What could he do, though? Abilities like his were in high demand, but people like him weren't. Well, it didn't matter. He found his answer, after all.
Young Beckham smiled.
"Huh. You have a weird physique, and you just gained it. The process of transformation must've been too much for you...but hey! Welcome to being a Stranger, kid."
Muho's eyes widened, the corian bisque hair tainted red with blood poking into his eyes. A flash of blue flickered over his coffee-brown irises, and he couldn't help but slacken his jaw at this revelation.
Had he...finally gotten what he wanted?
Young Beckham's lips kept moving, but he couldn't hear anything he said. It was like Muho was caught up in time, his heart the only indicator that he wasn't paralyzed in the annals of progression.
Two hazy shadows wavered in front of him, their expressions unseeable but undeniably in agony. Whispers fluttered past his ears and struck the back of his head, and Muho felt a dull, ringing pain pervading his skull.
He clenched his fists.
(Right, this isn't what I wanted at all. I've been so blind, caught up in my slump of self-pity for too long. This is nothing but a step forwards. For my ultimate goal...there's a new light shining down this tunnel.)
The phantasms faded away, and Muho was synced with reality once again.
"...Wow! I mean, I've heard about a lot of similar things, but this is pretty different. It seems that too much heat makes you uncomfortable, and the reason for your current condition is that the blood in your body is too hot for it. You gotta cool it down with something mighty frigid. I'll whip something up quickly."
Young Beckham was finished with his lecture, rushing down the steps to cook up a healthy tonic that would ameliorate Muho's discomfort. Muho's head whipped around, only able to catch the tail end of both Beckham's words and the closing door.
(Wait...were they...simultaneous?)
He swore that he saw the lessening gap not even a second later than the end of Young Beckham's words. Instead of being perplexed, he nodded as he propped his head aloft with his knuckles.
"It seems my studying will pay off, especially when I get to Lagoon L'Azure. Edna didn't bother to show me, but Particularities really do give the body's capabilities a whole increase. Especially since Brother Beckham's Particularity looks like a mind type...or maybe a clairvoyant type?"
Since Muho was a prolific bookworm, he had all sorts of data crammed into his noggin. However, theory tended to be remarkably different from personally witnessing something, and it wasn't as if anyone would just demonstrate their Particularity on demand.
Particularities could be roughly classified in two ways that were familiar to everyone. Getting into specifics would be highly difficult, as every Stranger was unique. Two Particularities that manifested identically could be comparable to one another, but they could never be equated with another. Muho had read that there was a popularized theory on the subject, but since that information was qualified, he didn't know the name or its contents.
The first way: by its talent level.
While it was considered quite old-hat to equate someone's potential in raw values these days, this system persevered because of its unfortunate recurrence. As such, talent itself could only be recontextualized in order to keep up with the times.
F, E, D, C, B, A. If it ended here, it might seem like test scores, but there was more.
S, SS, SSS.
...And if you're familiar with a deck of cards, then you must know the J. The lowest tier, and the highest tier.
The discovery of the Joker talent grade was what supported such a massive reform in the definition of talent, to begin with.
Talent nowadays is a measurement of the ease of development for a Particularity. See, all Particularities are capable of growth. Therefore, it's even possible and becoming more common by the year for people to be able to develop new abilities under the influence of their Particularity.
Combat power was measured up to 1000 in The Blue Planet. By hook or by crook, even an F Tier Particularity would be able to reach the apex. It just took much more time and due diligence to awaken the potential...time that they didn't have, as lower-tier talents were often used as cannon fodder before anything else. Still, the possibility to change and grow exists in everyone, and there have been some peculiar Strange Academies that seek to propagate this message.
It was this willingness to research that led to the discovery of Joker talents. Wildcard might've been a more apt term, but then it would have too much intersection with a hushed part of society...
Those with Joker-tiered Particularities were capable of disguising their talent rank. It was an innate quality, some pretending to be stronger or weaker than they actually were. This unpredictability proved to some of the most stubborn people that society was varied and couldn't be quantified by simple letters or numbers.
In order to determine a person's so-called "worth," there would have to be a lot more testing and examination. Only after giving a person a chance could the result indeed be unearthed. This did a lot to raise the confidence of even the lowest talents, but life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. It was still hard for people to get a grip on life, to put themself through continuous torture in order to draw out the greatest of themselves.
The second way was the category. It was ubiquitous for a single Particularity to have many categories, so they had been condensed into easy-to-identify roles.
Warrior. Mage. Summoner. Druid.
Fire. Water. Earth. Air.
Natural. Artificial.
There were many more, but it went along those kinds of lines. Muho tended to think that they sounded a lot like video games, but it wasn't uncommon for reality to be stranger than fiction.
(No, wait. Isn't fiction stranger? I swear, the system prompts in-game keep advising against expecting classes in Everything is Bury. Is it trying to break the mold...I mean, it's a common concept for a job system to appear in MMORPGs.)
Muho deliberated on this further, but before he could get caught up in his mental ramblings, the door busted wide open.
Young Beckham held up a large pot, a plastic-wrapped spoon jutting out of his apron pocket. It was so cold that it was steaming...
The room's temperature dropped by some degrees celsius. Frigid air billowed from the lid in thin streams as Young Beckham took it off.
The smell of fresh tomatoes, cucumber, onions, garlic, and various peppers aromatically spread across the room. There were a couple of other fragrances that Muho couldn't quite distinguish, but as he gazed at the soup, he realized there was a discrepancy.
"...There's no meat."
Muho's lips were firm, but droopy at the ends. His stomach roared like a lion as his nose gulped in the intricacies of the soup at his side.
Young Beckham made a face that was halfway between concerned and disturbed as he handed Muho the spoon.
Well, he tried to. The spoon was in Muho's face, but the young man didn't budge. Instead, he stared rather forlornly at the contents of the pot.
"...It's gazpacho. It doesn't require any animal products, unless you count the fertilizer used to grow the fruits and vegetables."
"...Yeah, I guess."
Muho still didn't grasp the spoon.
"Look, kid, eating cold meat isn't a good idea. I mean, you'd have to have a pretty strong stomach to even consider the thing, right? Especially since most of the meat these days is prone to mutation due to all the Strange Energies..."
Silence.
The slight twitching of Muho's lips did not evade Young Beckham's perception. He calmly scrunched his eyebrows in response, refusing to consider the implications of what he had said any further.
Instead, he placed the spoon in Muho's hands, even unwrapping the plastic. Then, fixing the handle in between limp digits, he closed Muho's fists and gave it a nice pat.
Then he slipped out of the room, making sure to softly close the door behind him. As he shut it, he sighed, shaking his head.
"It seems kids these days really lack fear, huh? What is the world coming to...man..."