thenearshore | May Training

Entry tags:

May Training

Who: Everyone
What: Information and Training
When: July 15
Where: Bishamon's temple, the Far Shore
Summary: Training and informational sessions for newly arrived gods (although there's none this time) and shinki

The product of many meetings and recommendations, at last it has taken shape. On this day, in anticipation of the new arrivals who appear in a recognized pattern, Heaven has partnered with the new gods and shinki to organize a very helpful informational reception.

The shinki arriving at heaven's meeting hall are, should they allow it, guided kindly towards Bishamon's temple. And in that vast complex they are brought to a traditional-style dojo.
Here the newly arrived gods are gathered, so finding their partner is more simple. The gods and shinki are free to take their time during this day to learn about the aspects of their new life from Amaterasu's shinki, or from the many veteran new god and shinki volunteers.

God Training

prayers

Shinki Training

informational pamphlets

borderline

Physical Training

Rest and Refreshments

In Summary:

Get all the information you can handle
Veteran new gods and shinki are welcome to volunteer showing the ropes
Get in some training
Don't get dehydrated
Spectate if you want
Have fun~

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[As Hakkai goes to make an exit, there's an orange abruptly thrown in his direction from the refreshments table for him to either catch or get a bump on the head from. His call. If he follows where it came from, he'll see Sharak Sanzo leant casually against the wall with her arms crossed, watching him expectantly.]

You should eat something before you leave.

[And that's all she's saying until he gives her some other cue. He'd been looking at the god information, but that doesn't mean he is one, and even if he is it doesn't mean he'll remember her. Still, it's odd that he's back already.]

[He turns, hand flashing up to catch the orange... and then follows its track back across the room to spot Sharak standing there. Surprise flashes briefly over his face before he offers a polite bow and heads towards her.]

Sharak Sanzo. Well, I suppose it's good to see that you're still here, although I saw you quite recently elsewhere....

[Enough cues? He splits the orange rind with his thumbnail and begins to peel it.]

How long has it been?

[Enough for now. Sharak nods in approval and takes a step forward to meet Hakkai.]

Two days or so. I'm going to go grey worrying about you boys. [She says, likely leading to her wondering whether or not she cursed herself when she wakes up tomorrow morning.

Sharak tilts her head towards the exit, indicating that they should continue this conversation as they make their way out.] Tell me what you remember.

[Even between gods, there are gaps in their knowledge. Gojyo had proven that.]

[Hakkai glances casually around: no Gojyo in evidence. And no one else paying too much attention to their conversation either, even as they move towards the exit.

Good.]

We had just spoken to the Three Aspects about the War God's appearance, and were traveling back to your temple.

[He raises his eyebrows at her, curious.]

I couldn't ask this before, of course, but what do you remember, Sanzo-sama?

[Sharak keeps pace with Hakkai, apparently unconcerned about eavesdroppers. But there's a reason she suggested they move away from the crowds.

Well, that's reassuring. It's as close to her own memories as anyone else has been and it means someone other than Dokugakuji knows at least a little about Nataku.]

The same, or there abouts. After we spoke to the Three Aspects, I went to take care of an errand before heading back to my castle. I was in the middle of that when I arrived here.

[That is so incredibly vague, under the circumstances. Really, Sharak, be a little more forthcoming.]

Ah. We were on our way back as well. [Give or take a few arguments, of course...]

-- It sounds as though our memories track to almost the same time.

[Almost exactly. They had both just left the seer's palace, and her errand could match up with the delay that Hakkai and the others had experienced. His eyes narrow thoughtfully, and he glances up at the bright blue sky as they step outside.]

What a lovely day. What did Gojyo remember? And Dokugakuji?

Is it?

[To her it feels like there's something in the air. But she's getting sick of clear skies.]

When he remembered anything at all, Gojyo remembered China. He thought somewhere around Yushu. We could talk about how you guys reached me, but he didn't remember it.

Dokugakuji is only a little behind us. He told me the last he remembered was getting Kougaiji away from Nataku after the attack. [...] For a while, we thought he might be the common thread.

Nataku?

[Hakkai's eyes narrow thoughtfully as he looks back at her. There is something oppressive about the warm day, but the skies are blue, and they're thankfully at sea level: the oxygen alone would make the day feel pleasant.]

Possibly, but I'm not sure any of us can trust our memories to accurately reflect the time we were taken to this place. I can assure you Gojyo didn't vanish for months at any point before we reached your castle.

[Unless the time he went back was the same as the time he left. There were some obvious clues supporting the idea that he hadn't come from the time Sharak and Hakkai remember: Hakkai had seen him with his hair up enough times as a god to know that the flamelike curl of his new youkai marking was nowhere in evidence. But was that an effect of being removed from the influence of the Minus Wave, or a reflection of a body that matched the time he remembered?

He can't guess, and, now, Gojyo remembers nothing.]

[Sharak nods.] No one has mentioned remembering further along than me, but it's possible that I'm missing memories as well. If it's actually due to memory loss, anyway.

[She's not dismissing time travel just yet. They're already being brought in from different worlds, what's time travel compared to that? Or even possibly alternate timelines less obviously different than the ones they've identified already.]

Ukoku Sanzo thought we were all dead, but I think that was probably due to his own philosophy as much as anything. [Melodramatic, nihilistic crow.]

Dead, and suffering from variable proportions of memory loss? Well, it's a theory. Not a particularly useful one, of course.

[Although it does lend itself well to despair. Hakkai had subscribed to it for a time himself, and there's no way to disprove it besides finding a way for them to return home in their living bodies. Which is his goal in any case -- and believing that it's impossible is just a way to salve the sting of giving up.

If he's going to waste time believing useless things, he may as well think he's a butterfly dreaming that he is a god.]

It does have the advantage of fitting the available evidence.

What's your theory?

Being "useful" wasn't really his goal. I think the excuse to be lazy appealed to him.

[Sharak, don't shit talk someone who isn't even around to hear it. She's not taking that theory too seriously anyway- for one, it's too easy. For another, if it's true then they may as well give up anyway.]

I don't want to commit to any one theory until I have something close to concrete evidence supporting it. [Deciding what the truth is before finding the proof is where logical fallacies lie.]

But I don't think it's just memory loss at work, unless that part is purely accidental. I can understand reasons for having the gods not match up, but the shinki have conflicting time points too and they don't even remember them. It's extra work for very little payoff.

Gods know something about their shinki, though -- don't they?

[He turns his hands palm-up in a tiny, casual shrug, glancing at her with keen interest.]

Gojyo told me, when he was my god, that he'd seen something that made him think we weren't really dead. You named me once, Sharak. What did you see?

[He knows his past, now. He'll know if it was a true vision -- some future death -- or a lie.]

[Sharak glances back out of the corner of her eye. She can guess what lead Gojyo to think that. It had jumped right up the list of her own suspicions as soon as she'd named Genjo.]

... A mess, honestly. Goku was there, without his limiter. You weren't wearing yours either. It looked like the two of you had been fighting. [And since she doesn't know how many times that sort of scenario has popped up over the course of Hakkai's life, she adds to it.] Gojyo was there, but I don't think Genjo was. Does that sound familiar?

[If it does, he obviously survived it- and this Hakkai in front of her is the same one who was a shinki previously. That's different than most of the other cases. This stands a better chance of confirming Gojyo's theory than any of the other examples.]

It does.

[He frowns. It does... but it doesn't entirely answer the question, either.]

It's possible it's something later in my life, but if it's the one I'm thinking of, my heart did stop. Luckily, Gojyo was there.

[And also luckily, Gojyo knows CPR. Hakkai might do something like that again, if there's another emergency, and with Seiten Taisei learning his tricks with disturbing speed it's likely he'll die the next time in a way that's not as reversible.

His frown deepens.]

... So if that's the "death" I suffered before, I was only dead for a matter of seconds. My soul would have had to be stolen and returned at once.

And who's to say that isn't possible? With everything else they've managed, taking someone from their world for just a second might be simple.

[Actually, she's counting on it. It's the only thought helping her sleep at night. Hakkai can probably guess why. They all have important work to do, but Sharak's mission has less of a time limit and more of a constant horde mode.]

But Genjo's was wrong as well. When I named him, I saw him dying not long after his fight with Kougaiji at my castle. But I know for a fact that he survived at least a few days after that.

[He's still hurt, and the injuries may kill him later indirectly, but he's not dead.]

Indeed. He was well enough to pick fights by the time I'd left.

[Admittedly, Sanzo has to be comatose to not be well enough to pick fights, but he certainly wasn't dead. Nor had he ever been as close from those burns as Hakkai had come from electrocution, although the long-term damage and scarring will be severe.]

... I'm going to have to ask just what Gojyo's god saw on his return.

[Are they all wrong? Two times when real injuries didn't lead to real deaths is coincidence; three would be a pattern.]

As for taking us for a short time, if Gojyo's memories weren't altered before, he can't have been gone for more than a day.

[Sanzo could have disappeared for weeks. Gojyo, though, hadn't gone without Hakkai seeing him at least once for longer than a day's work at any point during that time.]

And he was here for a month and a half.

[Sharak nods in agreement.] I can't verify anyone else I've named, just you and Genjo.

[Neither Kainé nor Celty had anyone around Sharak could ask, as far as she could tell. Not everyone is as obvious as the Saiyuki cast.]

Either memories are being altered beyond what we already know shinki forget, or we're being taken and returned before enough time passes for anyone to notice. [... Well, those are the two most simple answers.] That or we're dealing with branching timelines, but you remembering your time as a shinki contradicts that.

Yes. There's something... odd about my memories of my time here before, though. I didn't remember them until I returned here, for one thing, and I couldn't say exactly when on my personal timeline I was here before.

Even if our memories are accurate now, there's no doubt they're being altered to an extent.

[Beyond shinki's forgetting. But the fact that that wears off in patches, too, makes it clear that the memories lost are caused by something more than the natural state of being for shinki.]

I would have hoped that you'd say something about being kidnapped across worlds, in the time it took you guys to reach my turf. If you guys were keeping secrets like that, I'd be a little annoyed.

[Because she's such an open book with her allies. No mysteries with Sharak Sanzo.]

If the new shinki aren't really shinki, we can assume whoever is bringing us here just has free reign over our memories whatever role we're given.

Why, we certainly wouldn't have kept a secret like that. Genjo spent quite a while telling you about our trip, didn't he?

[So if she failed to be informed about anything it's Sanzo's fault. Hakkai smiles cheerfully.]

That does seem like a good working theory, doesn't it? I'd say the priority is still discovering who's responsible for our appearance.

He's not even here and you're still helping him take responsibility... What a reliable team Genjo has.

[He's so fortunate. Sharak is jealous.]

That hasn't changed. I don't suppose you've suddenly remembered any significance to crop circles we missed before?

There's no need to flatter us. I'm sure he'd take responsibility himself if he were here to do it.

[Instead of being back with Jeep and the others, or plunged into oblivion, or whatever else might happen to souls that have been, but are no longer, unwilling residents of the Heavens.

He taps a finger against his chin.]

Not as such. I have a few ideas for following that up, though. Suijin hasn't told you anything further since I disappeared?

[Maybe they do just toss them back where they belong while they don't need them. It seems to have been what they did with Hakkai, for the few days that was. It's nice to hope.]

I haven't heard from her. You didn't miss much, beyond some fires and fuss. [It was more or less impossible to miss Hibari's rampage entirely.] What are you thinking?

If that mark is related to our appearance because it's the remnants of a spell that pulled us in, could there be more than one? We're appearing in waves at regular intervals. I plan to check for worldwide news reports of any similar phenomena, and if I find them, to look at the timing.

[He doesn't expect to find them all. Not every place is as small, and regularly trafficked, as the Isle of Man; there are plenty of wilderness areas where a strange dead circle that size would never be noticed at all.

Perhaps he should be considering satellite photographs instead.]

If it starts looking like they match up to our appearances, we'd have a schedule and a signal to look for a place where the person casting this spell will actually be.

I might have to have a word with "Aidos" about the one they found.

[It's probably just the same as their one, but it's worth asking. And perhaps Suijin let something else slip while talking to them that she held back from Hakkai and Sharak.]

A schedule could be too much to hope for though. Unless you catch one immediately after it appears, and can be sure that's what you did, the appearances are a little too close together to predict that. The circle we found could be months or days old, for all we know. The best way to judge the timing would be to compare the different circles and the intensity of the energy remaining around them, if it does change significantly.

Edited 2017-05-21 21:32 (UTC)

May Training

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