20 | Shopping Frenzy!

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Helping a grand opening go well
When: August 21
Where: The Near Shore
Summary: The owners and employees at a new shopping center are begging for help. Bad luck has plagued them, and their grand opening is this weekend! Gods and shinki alike have been asked to respond to their prayers on Opening Day, find the source of their misfortune and ensure that the opening goes smoothly.



The Yamada Corporation is opening a new, high-class department store in a Tokyo suburb. They've been running advertisements for weeks and excitement among their prospective customers is at a fever pitch. Unfortunately, things inside the project aren't going so well. Construction has been delayed, deliveries are wrong, employees keep getting sick or hurt on the job and it's starting to look like the grand opening will be a grand disaster. Their fervent prayers for help have reached the Heavens, who are passing them along to you to be granted... but with an addition: Heaven, too, is very interested in learning where that bad luck is coming from.



Maintenance Madness

For a brand-new building, Yamada Department Store is having a lot of maintenance issues. Toilets are overflowing, lights are burning out, stair railings are coming loose, and either the air conditioning is set so cold there's frost on the vents or it's not working at all. The overworked maintenance crew needs all the help they can get! How many gods does it take to change a light bulb?

Secret Shoppers

Are you really going undercover to make sure you stop problems before they start, or just enjoying a day of high-class shopping on Heaven's dime? Whatever your real motivation is, all expenses are covered... but you'll still want to keep an eye out for mishaps. Unfortunately, the grocery and bakery in the basement are under construction (they've had some flooding problems) but there are still six floors of designer clothes, consumer goods and restaurants to enjoy.

Retail Rescue

Between mysterious accidents and that nasty flu that seems to be going around, the department store is badly understaffed. Grab an employee uniform and someone else's nametag and pitch in before the lines get too long. There are positions open in every department, from the restaurant on the top floor to book sales on floor one.

It's not just sales and service you have to worry about: thanks to the store's misfortune, displays are toppling over, the wrong orders are coming in, fancy candies are melting all over the shelves and ink tags are exploding on their own. This is hard work!

Intrepid Investigators

The Heavens aren't just sending so much supernatural help to this department store to keep their faithful followers happy. They have reason to suspect that there's something more sinister behind this mysterious streak of extra-bad luck. Between keeping the lights on and the customers happy,
you've been asked to search the store and investigate all of the "unlucky" incidents in order to determine what's going on. The shinki who brought you this request hinted that Heaven would look favorably on anyone who uncovered something particularly useful....

If your character is investigating the department store and needs to know what they have found, please comment to the "Investigations" thread below with a link to your thread. Your hint will be provided.

Investigation threads longer than 10 comments will earn 200 followers for every god in the thread and 20 exp for every shinki. Once your thread reaches that length, please turn it in by replying to your hint under the "Investigations" thread to let us know you've earned the bonus.

In Summary:

• Keep the lights on
• Take some time out to enjoy a shopping trip
• Make sure the customers are happy
• Discover the cause of the bad luck
• Have fun~

Comments

investigators

[dragonflood]

[The flashlight beam is certainly a sight, and she cautiously watches until he starts talking. So he's just someone else who happened to be down here, then. She relaxes.]

Either way, it's our task to fix it.

[It's hard to tell what she's doing with the lights off, but with the sound akin to blowing out a candle, a greenish glowy sphere appears in the air. Her own light.]

What do you know about lighting? [She has no idea if it's normal for an entire floor to short out like that, much less coincidence.]

[fortunesmiles]

[Komaeda observes the strange light with interest, though it doesn't occur to him to ask. After all, he's seen any number of strange things since becoming a god, from both gods and shinki. At this point it'd be hard to surprise him.]

Not much, I'm afraid. I was having a lot of luck upstairs fixing things, but this blackout may mean my luck's run out for the moment...

[dragonflood]

[The light bounces ahead of her as Rekka continues moving further into the level.]

Luck?

[Wait—that's not the important part, probably.]

It the lights went out just now, whatever did it might still be here. [The idea that it's a "something" comes naturally to her.] Do you know where it'd have to be to do it?

[fortunesmiles]

[It's actually totally the important part, although Rekka can certainly be forgiven for not realizing that.]

Oh, yes. That's my talent - I have ultimate-level luck.

[He doesn't explain that any further, preferring instead to consider her question.] As for where something would have to be to knock out the lights...well, really anywhere in the electrical system, I'd imagine, although unless something is moving around in the walls, the most accessible places would be either the fusebox, or an electrical panel somewhere. Of course, if it's an ayakashi, I'm not sure if it'd need to resort to physically interacting with the lights at all. But it'd be worth checking just in case...it might still need to be nearby, at the very least.

As for where we could find an electrical panel or the fusebox, I have no idea! But I guess there's nothing to do about that except look around.

[dragonflood]

[She listens intently; he raises good points. The one about it not being an ayakashi, in particular, but if gods and shinki are here, then it wouldn't be a human problem that she's obligated to stay out of.]

Let's look for one, then. I'm Rekka.

[She's gone another few steps before she finally realizes she's kind of dragging him along for them being two people who'd just bumped into each other.]

...Unless you were looking at something else?

[fortunesmiles]

Nagito Komaeda. [He falls into step behind her rather readily, and simply laughs when she stops.] Ah, no, it sounds like you're going to be investigating things I'd like to check, too! And if I can be helpful, that's the most that someone as worthless as myself could ever hope for.

[dragonflood]

[She glances sharply at him when he says worthless.]

Are you a god?

[Not that it wouldn't matter if he isn't a shinki, but it's just slightly more worrying if he is.]

[But, regardless of anything else, a shinki can create borderlines, and a god can teleport. On top of which—] I might need your talent.

[She has no idea where to even start looking, after all. If his luck really is that powerful, they may as well make use of it.] Which way do you think it is?

[fortunesmiles]

I am. Averruncus, as your service - the god of causing, or averting, disaster.

[At her question, he simply shrugs and smiles.] Well, it's just a guess, but I think we might have some luck this way. [And he points down a hallway that seems no more particularly auspicious than any other.]

[dragonflood]

Rangda. [As far as she can tell, a god of evil. So she leaves that part out.]

[She heads in the direction he'd indicated; it could be random for all she knows, but they have to start somewhere.]

If there is something down here, would you be able to fight it off? [Because she only asks the important (to her) questions in life.]

[fortunesmiles]

Without my shinki? Probably not. I didn't have any special powers when I was alive...in fact, even now I'm still rather unhealthy...

I'm not likely to die, though. In fact, I could probably make anything threatening me have incredibly bad luck; a freak heart attack, perhaps. I think we're down too many floors for a meteor strike to be viable...

[He seems to think that it would be an entirely possible and in fact not an unusual outcome for a meteor to hit someone or something that threatened him. He's genuinely pondering the logistics of this without any apparent awareness of how insane it sounds.]

[dragonflood]

[...Yeah, a meteor strike probably isn't likely. She would be giving him the side-eye if her only illumination didn't come from a tiny green flame and his flashlight, and if she weren't on guard against attack.]

Then I'll take point...

[Well...she would have, anyway, but details.]

There's a metal door up ahead. [Maybe they'd have more luck with a metal-door strike instead of a meteor. It's still a bit aways, though, and plenty of places for enemies to be hiding in the dark.]

...Do ayakashi get heart attacks?

http://thenearshore.dreamwidth.org/222237.html?thread=46990109#cmt46990109

[fortunesmiles]

You never know. [Komaeda sounds monumentally unconcerned.] Are you convinced this is the work of ayakashi, then?

o/ (didn't realize you already had one when i posted to that thread myself, whoops |D)

[dragonflood]

It's a possibility.

[But really it's just her assumption, since it's what she's used to. He's already mentioned that he doesn't think it's the work of ayakashi, but considering the both of them are without their partner shinki (Rekka's has actually vanished), she thinks it's still worth it to be careful.]

I can't rely on luck...

np!

[fortunesmiles]

Oh? What do you rely on, then? You seem to have a pretty interesting talent yourself! Although I admit I'm not sure what to call it...

[dragonflood]

Skill. [She doesn't mean to sound so pompous when she says that in answer to what she relies on, it just came out that way since she says it so bluntly...]

[And...she wouldn't call it a talent, but on the other hand, she wouldn't have called luck a talent, either.] This light? It's a spell.

[She continues striding forward at the same pace as ever.]

[fortunesmiles]

Ah, so you can use magic? That's amazing! I admit, where I come from, people's talents generally aren't supernatural...although sometimes they can be so amazing or outlandish that they seem to come close. But I don't think even an Ultimate Magician could actually do real magic.

Ah - wait! [Komaeda suddenly pauses at an intersection.] Why don't we go this way? [He points in a direction that looks no more or less promising than the direction they're already going.]

[dragonflood]

[Well...they're gods here now. (She has entirely missed the point.)]

[And she does consider it a little odd that a luck talent doesn't count as supernatural, but not enough to comment on it. His world sounds pretty different from hers, after all.] What would an Ultimate Magician do?

[At the pause, she just nods and turns in the direction indicated. If it leads into a dead end, they can always just turn back; if she were alone, she would have had to search in a more systematic manner anyway.]

[fortunesmiles]

They'd probably do the most incredible magic tricks you've ever seen...but performance magic, you understand. Not actual magic. Some pretty inexplicable things might happen in the world I came from, but nothing that actually breaks natural laws...

[Komaeda is glancing into a side room off the hallway, with a quick cast of his flashlight inside, when he pauses.] ...oh? What's that?

[And without hesitation, he slips into the room, pushing his way past draped, heavy plastic toward the things he's spotted on the floor.]