011 | Black Parade

[godsoffortune]

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

As souls are released from the objects they've taken control of, the air will become thick with a hazy fog of souls rushing away, into the air, and out of sight. This may make the continued fighting a little more difficult, but it means that the job is getting done.

Through some innate sixth sense, some of the dead people may seem familiar to certain gods (or shinki with specific memories). They can recognize some of the souls as friends or compatriots from their home world that had died. And these souls will recognize them as well.

Any characters not currently in the game that have actually died in their canon are free to be used for this part of the event and played out as NPCs by you and whatever partner you are playing with. All of these individuals will react in a similar way, though - they will beg to be released because it hurts them so horribly to be here right now and, of course, they can only be released in the same way that all the other souls are being released: exorcism or total destruction.

In Summary:

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

Comments

[tuishou]

[That's just peachy. Neji can't even bite out a retort, not about the reckless idiocy of not calling out when there will be literal lightning raining down on the field, and not about not knowing the limits to one's powers, either. He's left with enough self-awareness to know it'd be hypocritical at best.]

I don't know.

[Long enough. Hopefully. Another low sweep of his leg brings down a body which in turn serves to make the two shambling behind it trip. Seeing as Neji would really rather not be picky over how he handles the waste disposal at the moment, he aims a kick to one leg each (not like they're surprisingly quick to scramble back up) and turns back long enough to gesture to Erk that, hey

easy targets.] But I'm not tired. [Grossed out? Unbelievably so.]

[misterfrumpyface]

[Erk won't say no to easy targets. And with them having landed on top of each other, he can take them all out with one thunderbolt. He wastes no time in doing so.]

Good. [That makes one of them that isn't tired, at least. Erk can feel himself starting to get winded; it would seem that using as much magic as he's used in this short a span of time is draining. He's not about to admit it to Neji, though, and aside from breathing a little hard he looks no worse for the wear. He's still got plenty of fight in him, but he's going to have to start being more efficient with his magic use.]

If you can keep heaping them up like that, I can finish off more of them at once.

[Yes, it's disgusting that these are corpses he's talking about heaping up and frying with lightning, but he can't afford to let himself think about that right now. They've cleared out most of the foes in their immediate vicinity, but there are still a few to contend with.]

[tuishou]

[Took them long enough to find a system that'll work for them both. Neji mutters a clear (oxymoron, much?) agreement and thinks that for all the abuse his eyes are currently being randomly subjected to, the damn magician can't have been that bad of a find in the battlefield.

There's a loner zombie sprinting towards them both from the left- freshly dead, and seemingly fully functional limbs. Neji's juuken doesn't quite do quick work of it, he's not trained to break bones and his chakra control is currently flimsy in its outpouring at best, but it's incapacitated before more shamblers appear from the... fog?

Since when is there fog?

Anyway, Neji has new targets to lure to the squirming body at his feet and-- oh right, before he goes--] Announce before you blast the things, please.

[The 'please' is about as passive aggressive as one can get, but an.y.way.]

[misterfrumpyface]

[Erk rolls his eyes. Why doesn't anyone here know even the first thing about magic? He can't announce before he blasts them; it would mess up the incantation. The chanting is the announcement. And the glowing, for that matter.]

You're too old to be scared of lightning. But if it makes you feel better, I'll chant louder. [There is absolutely no effort made to mask his sarcasm.

Still, he does make sure that the Thunder command that finishes the incantation is nice and audible as he picks off the body at Neji's feet and one of the others that was foolish or uncoordinated enough to trip over it. There. Happy now?

He can hear the shuffling steps of other corpses in the vicinity... but now there's fog? Of course there's fog. Because fighting the reanimated dead wasn't nearly bothersome enough. Erk bites back a groan.]

We need to find a more defensible location. We're liable to be surrounded like this.