thenearshore | Hello! My name is Elder Sha (open log)

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Hello! My name is Elder Sha (open log)

Who: Gojyo and whoever he runs into!
What: Snooping around the Far Shore to try and learn more about why they're all here
When: The days following the temple fire (March 27-31ish)
Where: All over the Far Shore and select spots on the Near Shore
Warnings: will update

Gods and shinki both are disappearing, the priest had said. And nobody knows why. As if being told that he was a) dead, and b) a shape-shifting monster hunter wasn't bad enough (although, to be honest, he was really on board with the monster hunter thing. How cool was that?) Without any memories to draw on -- without even really knowing what he knew and didn't know -- he didn't see a lot of options available to him.

(open to anyone:)
1. He could go talk to Amaterasu. She was the head god around here, as far as he'd been able to determine, and given that somebody had just set her house on fire with her in it while papering the neighborhood with DOWN WITH AMATERASU flyers, he was going to go out on a limb and guess that she knew something about the whole mess he'd found himself in the middle of.

Now if he could just find her.

(Open to anyone:)
2. He could -- and he really loved this word -- crowdsource. Whoever was responsible had to be watching the network -- they'd be a fool if they weren't -- so in-person conversations was the best bet. And yeah, okay, he felt a little stupid at the idea of walking up to one random temple after another and asking the gods and shinki there what they knew about the disappearances, but he also turned into a goddamn staple remover, and there was nothing stupider than that.

(Locked to Yuri and/or Neji and/or Hakkai:)
3. He could feel out the resistance. Sharak Sanzo had all but dumped an invitation into his lap, and she'd made it pretty clear that the swamp elf was a part of it, too. Confronting the guy seemed like a potentially dangerous way to spend an afternoon, but he was already dead, right? What harm could it do? And eventually, if he asked around, somebody would have to know where the creepy smiling guy covered in plant tattoos lived.

(Locked to Sharak:)
4. He could blow the whole goddamn plan off, and go find someplace to get a drink.

(ooc: If none of these prompts work for you, feel free to wildcard and make your own!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hakkai flinched before he caught himself.

"Of course," he managed. He needed tea for this conversation. He needed something to occupy his hands, and while he'd bought himself a pack of cigarettes in a fit of irrationality after the fire at Amaterasu's temple, he wasn't used to them yet, and they were more awkward than comforting. "-- Do you want to come in? It's really much..." Less unlivable? He cleared his throat. "More pleasant inside."

Gojyo straightened up at that. Was he making the Swamp Elf uncomfortable? The man had nearly fallen out of a tree when he approached, and now here he was, twitching and coughing his way through a simple conversation.

Had he been wrong about the guy all along? Maybe he wasn't creepy and violent -- maybe the enraging stamp on his eye was just as pointless as Gojyo's own gun mark. Maybe he was just really bad with people.

Huh.

"...Sure," he offered at last. He wasn't going to eat or drink anything that came out of such a disgusting mess, but it should be safe enough to walk through, right? He flicked his twig off into the bushes, and cautiously headed up the creaking porch steps. "Is there anyone else here?"

"I'm not sure," Hakkai admitted. "I'd just gotten back from class, and, well."

He cast Gojyo a dry glance. He would sound normal. He was not going to let that little slip turn into a real hint that Gojyo -- and Gojyo's disappearance -- meant much more to him than a few days' awkward acquaintance would explain. "I know how it sounds, but: the nooses needed cutting down again. Yuri is the goddess of suicides, and the landscaping seems to come with the territory."

The door didn't creak when he pushed it open (at least, anymore: he'd oiled the hinges) to reveal a nicely appointed, warm, comfortable front hallway complete with a rug for the hardwood floor. Inside, Yuri's temple smelled of coffee with a hint of woodsmoke from the sitting-room fireplace.

"Hello!" he called. "I'm home, and we have a guest!"

Silence answered, and after a moment, he glanced back at Gojyo with a faint smile. "I suppose they're out."

Gojyo gave the pile of rope a very wide berth, and a suspicious glare. Did they crawl back into the trees at night? God, he was never going to sleep again.

"Uh. Great. That's..." That was the opposite of great, but his obvious discomfort faded somewhat once he entered the temple itself. It was the coffee smell, he decided at last. No place that smelled of fresh coffee could be all bad.

"That's great." Nobody to spy on them, right? So they could talk freely. Gojyo's fingers twitched against one another, craving a familiar shape and weight. Maybe he should take up that coin trick where you bounced it across all your knuckles, he thought distantly. "Look, I, uh. Can't stay long."

"Of course," Hakkai murmured, and waved at the corridor. "The kitchen is that way. I'm making myself some tea; you're still welcome to a cup while we talk if you'd like. Meanwhile..."

He looked back to meet Gojyo's gaze, a flicker of grief visible for a moment in his eyes. "I'll answer any question you have, but I don't know how to stop anyone from disappearing yet."

Did he like tea? He liked coffee, judging by how good it smelled, but he still wasn't about to eat or drink anything that came out of a haunted house. ...Haunted in more ways than one, he noted, catching what he was pretty sure was a flash of sorrow when the swam-- when Cho mentioned the disappearances. So he'd had a friend other than Sanzo, huh? Guess that wasn't too surprising.

"I'm good," he said, waving off the offer again. Instead, he found himself a wall to put his back too, and waited for Cho to make his own cup. "I want to hear what you think is going on here, though." He'd been through the routine with enough people that it was second nature; he held up one hand and ticked the points off his fingers with the other.

"Why are we here, who really brought us here, who's making us vanish, why are only some of us gods, and why do gods have their memories but us shinki don't?" Just the basics, then.

Hakkai busied himself with the kettle. It was easier having this discussion without watching Gojyo's face; they were questions he'd answered a hundred times, as well as he could, with the limitations of his own knowledge.

Easier, to think of this man as a new shinki, and not as Gojyo.

"I think the answer to who really brought us here and who's making us vanish is the same," he said, setting the kettle under the tap to fill and watching the water. "Mostly. And I think only some of us are gods because only so many gods have disappeared to ... ah ... make the roles available. Whoever is doing it is bringing in extra souls."

He put the kettle on one of the front burners and turned the flame to high. That left no excuse left for him not to turn around and return Gojyo's gaze while he waited for the water to heat.

"No shinki keeps their memory. Not us, and not the ones who are made by the gods from normal wandering spirits. The interesting question, I think, is why do we sometimes get parts of our memory back?"

I'm filling in for Aditi, Sanzo had said, and suddenly that comment made a little more sense.

"Do you remember things?" he asked, pitching his voice instinctively low. "I..." can't even think about remembering things without feeling sick to my stomach "...don't."

But was that entirely true? He frowned, folding his arms and tucking his head down, chin to chest, scowling at the floor as he thought. "I know some stuff -- I know I'm left-handed, I know I used to be a smoker, I know I've got these scars..." He unfolded his arms long enough to hold up a bare forearm for Cho to see where the tan flesh was decorated with pink lines indicating deep slices and scratches, and one pit that looked almost like he'd been shot with a ping-pong ball. He held it up at chest height for a few seconds, then tugged at a stray lock of his hair. "And I know this is natural, somehow, even though as far as I can tell I'm Chinese."

He tucked his hands back in his pockets and regarded Cho curiously. "But that and my name, that's about it. I thought that's all any of us got."

Hakkai glanced at Gojyo's bare forearm, and found himself, absently, tallying the wounds: most of them he remembered. Most of them he'd treated himself, after they started their journey. One of them, he'd dug a bead out of.

(I don't know how you got that scar, Elsa had said to him once. It had only been a few months ago when he stood in Gojyo's place, and Gojyo stood in his.)

"It's all any of us get to start with," he agreed. "Among the new shinki, it's all some of us ever get, but others have remembered fragments of their lives.

"I remember most of the few years before my death, but before that, nothing."

The kettle lid rattled behind him, startling him a step away from the stove before he turned to pour his cup of tea.

To the rising steam, he added, "Some of us think it may be a sign the spell that puts us in the role of shinki is weakening."

Years. Gojyo leaned forward at that, like a hungry man approaching a feast. Cho remembered years of his life. He knew who we was, what he was. Even only two or three years out of what, Twenty? Thirty? That was still so much.

The bolt of jealously was hardly surprising, after a revelation like that.

"But is that a good thing?" Cho certainly sounded like he'd meant it that way. "If the spell weakens and we stop being shinki, then we're nothing but ghosts."

"Or gone." Hakkai's agreement is mild. "The spell wearing off might be why we disappear."

He leans back against the counter, wrapping his hands around his teacup as he watches Gojyo. He wants to remember, doesn't he? The hunger in his eyes is painfully familiar, and it goads Hakkai to continue as he looks down at his cup again.

"... But you shouldn't be eager to remember, even apart from that. If you're reminded of something you haven't remembered on your own, you'll become an ayakashi."

Judging from his reaction, that wasn't information anyone had shared with him before. He wanted to disbelieve it... but why would Cho lie? Especially after admitting to having regained so much of his memory himself?

"That doesn't make any sense," he muttered, kneading the tension out of the back of his neck with one hand. "They're just memories. Why should it matter if we remember our lives or not?" Folding his arms again, he stared up at the ceiling, as though expecting that the answer would fall from the sky. "Why don't they want us to remember?" He drummed blight-stained fingertips against his bicep. "What don't they want us to remember?"

"The real gods," Hakkai said, "would tell you it's because, knowing what we lost to dying young, we succumb to despair."

He glances up with dry amusement in his gaze, and loses the joke he'd been about to make to the sight of Gojyo's fingers darkened purple with blight where they tap against his arm.

He bites back the urge to call Gojyo by his first name -- it's not that being on first-name basis is too familiar, but Hakkai's not sure that he can say Gojyo in the tone of a new acquaintance -- and settles for a slightly choked, "-- Your hand."

Gojyo can't help but snort at that. Despair? Over what, being dead? They already know they're dead, what kind of a...

"Huh?" He glances down at his hand in confusion, frowning at the weird purple goop he apparently touched. Your house is disgusting his reaction clearly said, as he rubbed his thumb and fingers together. The blight spread, but smoothly -- he couldn't even feel it, and it smeared over his skin like the finest oil. Intrigued (although still disgusted), he brought his hand to his face to sniff it. "The fuck is this?"

"Don't touch your face!" Hakkai's cup rattled against the counter as he deposited it and hastily darted forward to catch Gojyo's wrist. "That's blight."

He had been careful. He'd been careful, and Gojyo had still -- this was too dangerous, he admits coldly to himself. Gojyo, most of the time they'd known each other, had been his god. Gojyo had known instantly when he was blighted; he'd felt the sting of it, even when Hakkai didn't.

Hakkai hadn't known Gojyo was blighted until he saw it on his fingers.

Having a youkai coming at him -- even a youkai who was proving to be a lot nicer than he'd originally thought -- was a startling experience. Gojyo moved to step back, but with the wall behind him there was nowhere for him to go. His heel and shoulder both hit the wall hard, and he jerked his hand out of Hakkai's grip even before his words sank in.

"Blight?" That was what happened when you touched an ayakashi, wasn't it? But he hadn't touched anything but what was in this temple. Glaring at Hakkai suspiciously, he tucked his hand against his (clothed) chest, and stepped away from the wall, clearly his escape route behind him.

"You're got those demon things here?"

Hakkai stepped back, giving Gojyo a few extra feet of space, and folded his arms tightly against the abrupt terrified urge to put a few miles between them instead. He couldn't risk Gojyo's life like this. It might not have been anything he said. But he can't.

"No. Negative emotions can blight us, too. Especially guilt or regret."

His gaze flicked up to meet Gojyo's, an unspoken question in his eyes, but he doesn't wait for the answer.

"If you haven't been blighted before, it can be washed clean with purifying water from a shrine. It's the green glass bottle in the washroom."

Gojyo stared hard at Hakkai's face, searching -- with not a little disbelief -- for an answer that he didn't even have a solid question to frame. He'd assumed that blight hurt, but he couldn't feel a damn thing on his fingers. Shouldn't it burn, or ache, or something? Something to let him know that it was there?

"What would happen," he asked at last, holding his blighted hand out loose at his side, "if I didn't know it was there?" If I didn't wash it off? Cho's reactions were telling him pretty much exactly what would happen, but he wanted to hear it spoken aloud.

"Your god feels the pain if you're blighted," Hakkai said, which wasn't an answer, but was important.

He'd have to tell Gojyo as much as he could, right now, and then -- discourage him from coming back. This was too dangerous. Gojyo could be careless, but he wasn't stupid, and he'd be as eager to pick up on clues as Hakkai himself had been a few months ago.

He couldn't risk it unless he could stop himself from revealing those clues.

Mechanically, he continued, "... and if it spreads too far, water won't work anymore. There's a ritual called an ablution that three other shinki can perform to cleanse you at that point. Try not to let that happen. It's painful.

"If it goes further than that, you'll transform into an ayakashi yourself."

That... that was a lot of information. Gojyo was only half-listening to the second bit, though, because as soon as Cho said that Ekko was feeling pain from this blight, Gojyo was heading for the washroom and the promised bottle of holy water.

"What the hell do you mean, I'll turn into an ayakashi?!" This wasn't fair -- Ekko was just a kid, and he sure hadn't asked for this! Why should he suffer just because Gojyo, what, felt guilty about something? But who didn't feel guilty from time to time?

Where was that damn bottle. Where was the damn washroom? "Just from this stuff? Just for feelin' bad about something?" Ah, there it was. Now how was he supposed to open it without getting blight all over the bottle? "What happens to Ekko if that happens, does he die too?"

"It's the second door on the right," Hakkai called, stepping out into the hallway after Gojyo as he bolted for the washroom -- oh, good, he'd found it.

He leaned back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. There was a tiny cobweb tucked above one of the light sconces, pinhead-sized spider industriously widening it. Greedy spider, Hakkai thought: going after the best insect rewards meant highlighting itself to be dusted away.

"I don't know if it'll kill Ekko," he adds. "It's happened once here, and I don't believe the shinki's god died. He was put down quickly, though."

Fuck it. He could wash the bottle off once he was de-blighted. Rather than just dumping the water on his hands Gojyo plugged the sink and poured half the bottle into the basin, immersing both hands fully and roughly scrubbing at the blight until it dissolved away.

"How do I stop it?" He took extra care, checking his nail beds and the spaces between his fingers, making sure that every last trace of purple was gone from his hands. "I'm gonna feel bad about shit, that's just how us humans work--" Robots might not experience blight, but after that conversation with the tree-throwing dude, he'd checked. He was 100% not made of metal. "--so how the hell do I make it so I'm not hurting Ekko when that happens?"

Hands clear, he wiped off the bottle, then examined his face and throat closely in the mirror, just in case he'd touched himself there. There was no sign of blight, thank god... but the face in the mirror was just as unfamiliar as it had been that first day. He ran damp fingers under one eyelid, pulling it down slightly to get a better look at the blood-red pupil there.

Half-youkai bastards have red hair and eyes, he knew (although he had no idea how he knew that). But if he weren't fully human he'd know it. Wouldn't he? "I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Try not to feel bad," Hakkai said flatly, still watching the spider's industrious and futile work. He can see the edge of Gojyo's silhouette in the mirror, leaning close in to the glass.

The advice sounded as useless out loud as it felt. He couldn't resist a humorless little chuckle.

"... Mild regrets won't hurt anyone," he added, stepped across the hall, and reached up to squash the spider with the tip of his thumb. "But try to avoid the serious ones. Have you checked the back of your neck? Blight often shows up there."

Red hair and eyes, and two big gouges in his cheek. He ran his fingertips over the scars, and swallowed hard against the immediate and unexpected reaction. The flesh itself was numb, the edges slick and slightly cool, and the arousal that the touch stirred was painful and shameful like a fist squeezing his heart.

Cho's voices jolted his back to reality, and he stepped quickly back away from the mirror and his wide-eyed reflection. "I didn't..." Wait, what did Cho say? Oh. His neck. Cautiously, he pulled his hair aside, trying to see himself in the mirror, but the angle was simply impossible.

"How the hell are you supposed to be able to see the back of your own neck?" he grumbled, grateful for the opportunity to be frustrated at something else. "It's like they don't even want us to know when we get this stuff on us!"

"There's a hand mirror in the top drawer." For that very purpose, which, Hakkai suspects, Gojyo must have guessed by now; the washroom was too well supplied for cleaning away the marks of a shinki's guilt. He ignored the phantom itch at the back of his own neck, hidden under straggling hair he was allowing to stay collar-length to conceal his own blight, and wiped the remains of the spider off on the seam of his pants.

Hello! My name is Elder Sha (open log)

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