thenearshore | 011 | Black Parade

Entry tags:

011 | Black Parade

Who: Everyone!
What: Parade of the dead
When: All day May 26
Where: Shinjuku
Summary: The Near Shore needs a little protecting from the dead

The last few days have been filled with festival food, high energy, and lots and lots of parades. Near Shore residents really know how to enjoy their holidays, stopping up traffic for hours on end as floats and palanquins go by and filling the streets and courtyards in the area with food stands and festival treats. Many Far Shore residents may have found themselves drawn to this particular festival, as it is being held in honor of a shrine.

When an unexpected parade starts up, the people gather round to watch the impromptu spectacle. It's a little strange, yes, but nothing too terribly off-putting. That is until the parade reaches the shrine itself, at which point all hell breaks loose as the members of the parade start attacking anything and anyone in their way.

The Heavens will then call upon all the gods and shinki who are available to help, because these attackers are not normal at all - they are, in fact, the undead.

Let the Festivities Continue

The festival is a large, booming one. There are dozens upon dozens of food stalls set up all over the place with so many different kinds of foods that it could make your eyes go buggy, most of them fried in some way. On top of that, there is live entertainment walking around, stalls with souvenirs, and lots of excellent company nearby. Surely you'll be able to enjoy the festival to its fullest.

The Walking Dead

It is not immediately evident that the parade is being manned by corpses, but keen observers would be able to pick out the noticeable rotting elements of the dead. Anyone with a soul-sensing ability might even realize that they're not soulless, just lifeless. When the parade reaches the shrine, every god and shinki will be needed in order to protect the Near Shore from this menace. Corpses must either be exorcised or completely mutilated to the point where they can no longer move in order to release the soul.

Not Rootbeer Floats

On top of the mass of dead bodies being possessed by stray souls, some of the floats on wheels in the parade seem to have been taken over as well. They are moving slowly and with purpose towards anyone that crosses their path. At first, it may seem like the float is just veering a little off course, but it will soon become evident that it's headed towards you. They may be slow, but they're very large as well, meaning there's a lot more than needs to be destroyed to release the soul.

Souls, Souls, and More Souls

In Summary:

Enjoy the festival
Help save Near Shore residents
Take down the dead bodies
Try not to cry
Cry lots
Have fun~

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was good that at least one of them was practiced at swallowing the impossible so easily, Simon would have to be sure and use the man as a role model. For keeping calm about the new divine elements of his life, not how to tear people apart with his bare hands. Simon gave Hakkai a sidelong look that hopefully got across some gratitude before the shinki pushed ahead, already getting the float off the ground by the time Simon arrived.

As for lifting the thing, well, the doctor certainly wasn't weak but he wasn't exactly strong. Meaning the best thing to do to help would be get the person out from underneath as quickly as possible.

"Hold on, we'll get you out...!" The doctor knelt down and grabbed the hand, fingers slipping past to press the wrist...yes, there was a pulse. Simon spared a glance up at Hakkai and nodded the good news before reaching further in for a better grip. This was dangerous work, but it looked like Hakkai was holding enough weight up for the person--an older man, Simon could now see, to be pulled free. Simon hooked his hands underneath the man's arms and hauled him out, prompting a pained cry from the poor man.

"I'm sorry," Simon said, the apology automatic. "But it has to be done..."

The man's legs were bloodied and the cause wasn't difficult to spot, one of his knees had been shattered... Simon's jaw tightened as he finished pulling the man free, giving Hakkai a chance to drop the wrecked float. If it was too much a wound for Hakkai to heal on his own then Simon could do his part to lessen it...

Hakkai let the float settle back down to the street as Simon pulled the old man safely free, and turned, rolling one shoulder against the ache of unexpected effort. Good: he was alive.

It was something, at least, even though as he crouched to the man's other side he could see that the damage to his knee was severe. He might need surgery, or might even lose the leg ... and that was only if, trapped here on a street still too full of the undead, he wasn't caught and killed before he had the chance to get to a hospital.

There was no choice but to heal it, and if Simon had to take the injuries on himself to cure them, he'd be just as crippled. It was down to Hakkai.

"I'll see what I can do," he said, settling down onto his knees and beginning to focus his energy. He glanced swiftly at Simon, over the old man's head, and added more quietly, "This is more serious than anything I've tried so far."

Could his power draw together shattered fragments of bone? Reattach ligaments? He honestly wasn't sure, but he breathed, once, and placed his hands gently over the ruined knee. He would find out.

"Let's proceed carefully in that case," Simon answered, lips drawing into a thin line as he watched, still with his hands on the man's shoulders to help keep him still.

"What...who are you...?" The old man seemed as confused as he was grateful, but he did have the strength to try and protest beyond a tremulous whimper at even that gentle touch to his knee.

Hakkai was right though, there was a good chance that under normal circumstances, the man would need surgery. Broken bones needed to be realigned so they could mend properly...would the magic do that? Simon wasn't sure his could either...or at least it would result in him needing surgery instead of the man. Maybe there was still something Simon could do...

The god's brow furrowed, trying to draw on that wound like he had before but slowly this time. It felt a bit like changing how he breathed, drawing small and shallow breaths instead of what was normal. The wound itself did not change but Simon certainly felt something happening. A trickle at first, and then a steadily growing throb of pain in his own knee. The god's mouth made an even smaller line and his face slightly pale, but at least the man was relaxing now between the two.

"Oh, that's not so bad..." the old man mumbled. Hakkai hadn't even started yet.

"Please don't cripple yourself, Simon," Hakkai said pleasantly, and spread his hands over the old man's knee, letting his energy sink into flesh and down to the bone. Ah -- yes. There.

The man gasped as Hakkai felt pieces of bone shift and match their broken edges to one another, but there wasn't as much pain in the sound that he would have expected to hear. What was Simon doing?

He couldn't tell if the wound was healing faster than it should, but he could feel it healing. The bone did knit, although it was going slowly; the swelling faded faster, and the torn and bloodied flesh sealed into a network of fresh scars.

It wasn't until he had to put a hand down to stop himself from swaying that he realized just how much of his own energy he'd put into the old man's knee. With a jolt, he pulled back and caught his breath. It had been fascinating. So intricate, and so delicate....

And at this rate he would get them all eaten by a zombie, which would certainly teach him better than to get caught up in a fascinating new challenge in the middle of a combat zone, he thought, and straightened up with his hands on his knees, smiling at their patient.

"You should go home," he recommended, "and be sure to have a doctor see that soon."

"Shockingly enough that isn't the plan," Simon half spoke and half grunted. This was not as simple as the god expected. Instinctively Simon knew that letting go would break whatever connection he'd made with the man that allowed him to do this, which would mean the pain would stop. And on a very basic level Simon very much would have liked it to stop.

Instead he continued to breathe, reminding himself very sternly that he had been hurt worse before, and those had been actual injuries and not phantom pains. This was for the man, the poor old stranger, and while it was very unorthodox medicine it was close enough for the doctor to remember what he was and what that meant. Even if it was deeply unpleasant.

Simon spared a look up at Hakkai who seemed to be finding this much more peaceful. It would be nice if the shinki could hurry it up but Simon bit back the urge to press him. The last thing he wanted was to break his concentration and make this take longer. Yet the pain must have made it feel like it was taking longer than it really was, because once Simon saw the light of Hakkai's power flow through his hands again the pain immediately began to change and diminish. It was still distracting enough to keep Simon from focusing on the healing wound in the same way Hakkai was, but he could still see the swelling drop and the flesh shift as it worked itself back together.

"Oh, oh god," the old man mumbled, even more surprised than Simon had been when it had been his turn for healing. Simon's lips twisted, holding back a smile. When it was finished the pain was only a dull throb, making it not so terrible for Simon to gently give it back on his next breath, patting the man's shoulder before helping him get back on his feet.

"Yes," Simon agreed with Hakkai. "Keep it elevated for tonight and try to see one first thing in the morning."

The old man looked utterly dumbfounded at the two, mouth opening and closing but not quite finding the words for the question he clearly wanted to ask. Simon smiled a bit awkwardly and waved him off, finally prompting the man to turn and hurry out of danger with only a slight limp. With that the god let out a huff of breath and looked to Hakkai next, reaching to help him up as well if he needed it.

Hakkai's smile softened as he watched Simon help the old man to his feet -- his feet that both held his weight, though he stumbled a little as he hurried away. After the dozens of corpses he'd ripped apart bare-handed today, to be able to stop and heal someone was startlingly heartening.

It was, also, much more exhausting than mere violence. He waved off Simon's offered hand, starting to get to his feet on his own, until on his first step his knee gave way under him and thumped back down onto the asphalt. Hakkai winced, more with embarrassment than with pain, and managed to stand on his hasty second attempt.

"Did you do something with his pain?" he asked, brushing his hands together. A few flakes of drying blood spiraled down, shaken free from his skin.

There was an awkward moment after Hakkai failed to make it up on his first attempt where Simon tried to grab onto him and keep him from falling. Sadly Simon wasn't quite fast enough, leaving him with his arms just short of being useful and a sympathetic wince to mirror the one Hakkai wore. He kept a careful eye on the other even if he hadn't been able to help directly. Simon wasn't sure what, if anything, his new gifts could do for the fatigue that Hakkai clearly felt, but he could do other things. Keep an eye out for any hostile corpses still lurking about, for example.

Hopefully there wouldn't be a need to add to the gore. What was there was gradually becoming less and less unsettling to Simon. Hakkai had shown he wasn't wholly violent, that helped quite a bit.

"Ah, you noticed that?" Simon asked, looking down at his own hands for a brief moment. "I didn't think he needed it, so I thought I would try and borrow it like I can with actual injuries. It turns out that I can do that now too."

Simon was watching him worriedly; Hakkai flashed him a quick, reassuring smile. "I'm fine," he said. "It took a bit more energy than I'd expected." At least he hadn't actually needed help to stand; on first acquaintance, that would have been much too embarrassing.

The topic of the other man's new powers was both more interesting and less embarrassing than his own still-wobbly knees, so Hakkai breezed quickly past the latter, raising his eyebrows in interest.

"Is that what you're doing? That's quite a selfless power."

It was the exact sort of understated answer to put a thin, skeptical look on Simon's face, but at least he looked less worried. He'd continue to watch at the very least. Simon folded his hands over his chest, opting to play along and talk about whether or not Hakkai was in need of help.

"It's not all selfless," Simon said, brow furrowing. He never thought of himself as the sort, he just did what needed to be done. "I don't have to keep them. If you hadn't come along and helped me with the bite I would have found a corpse to give it to--"

Speak of the devil. Simon's words faltered as a distinctive shuffling came close enough to be heard. A fog was starting to build, providing some cover but it still wasn't safe to be in the middle of the streets, it was too open.

"...fine or not we should probably move," Simon said, voice quieter.

Hakkai's eyebrows went up with interest -- Simon could give the injuries away as well as take them? -- but the shuffle of dead footsteps was loud enough to discourage him from tracking down that topic. They were drawing nearer, although, wherever they were, they were still hidden by the slowly thickening fog.

"Yes," he agreed, lips thinning, and glanced around. He couldn't see any other living humans, or even gods and shinki, in the increasingly limited stretch of the street that was visible, but the shattered float they'd dragged the old man from under wasn't far. "Can you fight?" he added, glancing at Simon's face. Being a doctor didn't mean he couldn't, of course, but Hakkai hadn't seen him fight yet, and the only blood on his clothes was the small stain on his sleeve where he'd taken an injury from someone else.

He might be able to give his own injuries back to his attacker, but in a melee, would that be enough to keep him safe?

The look Simon gave Hakkai at that question was far more telling than any answer the doctor would give. Eyes slightly larger, questioning for only a brief moment, and then narrowing again with a quiet resolve. He would fight if he needed to. Whether or not he could fight and fight well was a secondary concern.

"I've learned a little," Simon answered honestly, hands closing into fists and opening again. How to throw a punch and how to take one, how to hold a gun and put down Reavers with it...the threat tonight wasn't as dangerous as Reavers but Simon didn't have a weapon. "But if you need more time to recover then we really should be moving."

An uncomfortable distance away the source of the shuffling revealed itself as a handful of figures in the mist, still at a lumbering pace. They hadn't been spotted yet but if they were about to very shortly.

That wasn't the face of a man with confidence in his fighting ability, Hakkai noted: determination, yes, but not confidence.

He flexed one hand absently, and glanced at the bodies as they emerged trailing wisps of fog. He was still a little unsteady on his feet, and while he could almost certainly still kill them, he didn't trust himself to take care of that many of them without letting either of them be hurt.

"You're right," he agreed, only a little reluctantly, and inclined his head in the direction of a narrow alley, not far away, almost roofed over by the buildings leaning towards one another above its dark concrete surface. "Over there?"

Simon followed Hakkai's look, ready to take just about any suggestion so long as it was away. The alley looks as close to ideal as they'll get, fortunately.

"Over there," Simon agreed with a nod, eager to run but wanting to be sure that Hakkai was at least running with him. Ideally he'd want him to go first, but the shinki had already shown a bit of pride earlier, not letting Simon help him to his feet. Either way they needed to go, and the quick sound of feet hitting the asphalt drew the attention of the dead.

It was a close thing, the mist barely keeping them hidden as they fled from the street and the lights overhead, making it to the alley. Behind them the horde converged on where they'd been, but pausing rather than turning towards the alley.

"...Is it the blood they're stopping for?" Simon whispered, risking a glance back.

"They might think there's someone else under the float," Hakkai murmured back, glancing out of their makeshift hiding place as the corpses clustered around the hulk. He hadn't heard any other breathing under it, so if there was someone else there, they hadn't survived the impact.

Perhaps it was just the scent of mortal blood after all. He glanced over at Simon, and added, "I'm afraid I should track down my god. His other shinki's still at home, so he's unarmed."

And while Gojyo could take care of himself in a fight... there were a lot of the corpses, and anyone would get tired eventually. Hakkai stepped back into the alley, turning to look down it. It turned to the left, and he couldn't see its end, but it seemed long enough that it probably reached through to the next street.

"Let's see if we can get out that way?" he suggested, tilting his head toward the turn.

Hopefully they're wrong. It was a grim thought, one that tickled at a mad urge to stay...but no, he hadn't seen anyone under the float other than the man with the broken knee. Staying was pointless, more than that it was dangerous.

"You'll hear no argument from me," Simon said, stepping further away from the street and looking back at Hakkai. Dionysus, if he remembered right. Simon couldn't imagine how well a god of wine could defend himself, but since Hakkai didn't appear to be seized with worry then Simon reasoned he must be able to handle himself better than the doctor could. Still, wanting to be sure and be there to protect him was something he could easily understand.

The suggestion was taken with a nod, Simon heading toward the turn and keeping his ears open for anything moving just out of sight. He didn't want to slow Hakkai down, though Simon didn't think he was useless...

"...when we find your god I can make my own way after that," Simon decided to offer. "Provided he's unhurt, of course. If he is I'll do what I can to help."

Hakkai nodded, falling into line behind Simon. He glanced back over his shoulder one final time before the mouth of the alley was lost in the mist, making sure that the zombies hadn't spotted their escape, and were still occupied with the blood-streaked float. There was nothing on their trail.

Yet.

He picked up his pace, matching the other man's. "All right," he said. "Have you met your shinki yet?"

He'd called himself an incarnation -- Ixtili... Hakkai admitted to himself he hadn't entirely caught the unfamiliar word, but in context, it was clear Simon was a god. And a new one, too, which meant his shinki should be somewhere in the area.

To be fair to Hakkai, Simon himself was still not wholly certain he was saying his new persona's name correctly either. 'Ixtlilton' had been a god Simon hadn't even heard of when things were first being explained to him, and he hadn't had the time to ask a lot of questions before this emergency came up. Questions that included...

"I haven't met them yet," Simon answered, brow furrowing with a faint worry. "We're supposed to...to feel something, right? Whatever our 'shinki' feels, their gods do too, or something like that.

"I haven't felt anything yet."

Simon had been assuming that meant he hadn't been given a shinki. It could also mean that wherever his shinki was, he or she was not feeling anything particularly powerful, meaning they were safe and far away from all this madness.

Either way, it left Simon vulnerable. Not as much as if he were still a 'mere mortal', but more than most gods.

(OOC: When I started these threads I assumed 'soulless' meant 'no shinki', now I know better so I've retconned that Simon's shinki got left back at his temple by mistake and he just hasn't met her.)

"Only particularly strong emotions," Hakkai assured him. "Fear or guilt, for example...."

If Simon's shinki wasn't feeling fear, as a new arrival into a mess like this one, they were either unusually strong-willed, as unable to experience strong emotion as Gojyo's first, silent shinki, or -- he didn't have one at all. Which would be a real problem. Hakkai frowned faintly.

"This isn't the best place to meet your shinki for the first time," he said, at last, bluntly. "It's easier to work together if you have the chance to practice first. If you can find your way to the shrine, you should be able to travel from there back to the Heavens; Inari won't mind."

Simon managed a side-long look at Hakkai. Was the other suggesting he just leave? The advice about his shinki felt sound to Simon, it was reassuring to be told that it would only be powerful emotions he felt and the suggestion to practice with his shinki of course made sense. Doing that here was obviously a bad idea, even if Simon knew who or where his shinki currently was.

But to just leave, when there were still corpses walking about and still living people needing help?

"I'll go when things settle down here," Simon answered, stubborn streak rising quickly as he marched sharply down the alley. "Inari shouldn't mind that either..."

Whomever Inari is.

"Certainly not," Hakkai agreed, but a little concern still lingered in his eyes as he returned Simon's glance. Without his shinki -- and without experience fighting with his shinki, or confidence in his fighting ability on his own -- Simon wouldn't be in a good situation if the zombies caught him.

Well.

"You should be able to outrun the zombies if you have to," he added, in a brightly helpful tone.

"They are not very fast on half-rotten legs, it's true," Simon agreed lightly, almost matching Hakkai's own tone. Getting surrounded was always a risk, but at the very least Simon wasn't worried about injuries. He could give them back almost immediately. In theory... So he should be fine so long as he was careful.

At least that's what Simon would tell himself in order to continue being careful and not let himself do anything as foolish as panic.

The alleyway continued to twist around behind the buildings, eventually steering back towards the streets of the parade route. The expected sounds of shuffling feet were not there, and the fog seemed thicker than when they'd left...and concentrated on the street itself. That was odd.

Hakkai's eyes narrow, trying to pierce the thickening fog in vain. There was something odd about the fog. He'd seen souls escaping from the bodies as they were dismembered -- up close and gruesomely personal with each of them, he could hardly miss the details -- but was the fog closing in just a fluke of the evening?

He hoped it was, but, at the same time, he wasn't sure the hints of faces and bodies in the fog were just pareidolia. Some of them seemed a little too real, their movements a little too fluid as they drifted upwards.

Somewhere inside the fog bank, flames crackled. Hakkai lifted a hand, warning Simon to stay where he was as he stepped forward.

Stubborn Simon could be, but he wasn't foolhardy. When Hakkai gestured for him to stop he did, looking over at the shinki in hope of an explanation... Instead Hakkai began to move forward to investigate on his own. Simon frowned. It wasn't as if the walking dead had suddenly found flamethrowers in the growing fog.

Though, now that Simon tried to look past Hakkai, the fog looked odd. Seeing shapes in smoke wasn't so strange, but Simon swore the mist looked as if it were made up of parts, shifting together like...like a mingling crowd.

That would be ridiculous, the newly minted reincarnation of an Aztec god thought. And then remembered the rest and had to admit that maybe it wouldn't be after all.

"What is it?" he asked, voice a low whisper at Hakkai's back.

He had seen them, earlier, rising from the bodies as he tore them apart: souls, faces that didn't match the slack-jawed faces of the corpses they had inhabited. Strangers, all of them, bound into the dead flesh of yet other strangers.

Hakkai's lips thinned at the thought, and he stopped just a few steps from the edge of the alleyway, murmuring in response to Simon's question, "Souls."

He hadn't been sure, at first. But the fog was expanding softly, spreading out, and he looked up into the blank-eyed face of an older man, scraggling beard and moustache framing his open mouth as he faded back into the fog, spiralling upwards with the rest.

They were, unquestionably, souls. Ghosts.

A body staggered free of the fogbank nearby, and Hakkai rounded on it, claws at the ready. It was a young woman's body, emaciated with illness, and a foglike face clung to the features: an old woman's face, with deep laugh-lines radiating from her eyes and bracketing her lips.

She moaned, the body's mouth opening just after the spirit's, like a bad ventriloquist's act. The moan was agonized, and as she reached out a hand, it was palm-up and begging instead of tensed to grab and rend flesh.

"Please," she begged. "Please free me, Gonou. It hurts, and I should be with God...."

Hakkai inhaled, sharply, and she reached for him with her other hand.

There was a brief flicker of 'what, really?' that wrinkled Simon's nose at the answer. But then...gods. And healing magic. And walking dead. So, all right, souls, Simon decided he'd swallow that too and the moment of disbelief passed. The new god took a step closer and then took two, getting a better look for himself at the fog and yes, he'd been right. There were shapes, human shapes, distinct as they could be when they seemed to be made of mist. It didn't look real, but Simon was starting to learn that was just the part of his own mind still trying to insist that he'd actually gone mad and none of this was real. It had grown quieter since he arrived at the parade and was left no choice but to start helping, but it was still there.

At least it kept him from grappling with the deeper philosophical questions of what the existence of souls meant and what that meant for him as a doctor, at least for the moment.

Sudden movement snapped Simon further out of his thoughts, though he jumped more at Hakkai snapping to attention than the woman's corpse. She was speaking. To Hakkai specifically, and...using a different name. Did she know him? Rather, did she used to know him? Immediately Simon felt ill at ease, he'd been told that shinki were not to know about their past, and the god felt instinctively that this was getting very dangerous very quickly. But what could he do?

"Hakkai," Simon warned, making his voice as steady as he could. "This isn't right."

011 | Black Parade

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