23 - Crazy Cat Shuffle

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Crazy Cat Shuffle
When: September 20
Where: Shibuya & Ikebukuro, as well as the Far Shore
Summary: The new Crazy Cat mascot keychains are sparking real passion in Tokyo's hot spots. Brawls have broken out over the extra-rare versions, and all of this angst is attracting ayakashi. The gods have been asked to step in before things get out of control.







Crossing Crisis

The Shibuya scramble crossing is always busy, but it's especially wild today. Ten new Crazy Cat vending machines have been installed at the mouth of the alley across from Shibuya Station's exit. Rumors are flying that these machines have extra Blue-Star Cats in them: the very rarest kind! A crowd of hundreds of excited fans have gathered, but the people at the front of the lines are buying lots of cats, and the mood is starting to grow sour as the people at the back of the lines begin to wonder if there will be any left by the time it's their turn.

This crowd needs crossing guards... or just someone who can snag some of those ultra-rare Cats and sell them to the back of the line for crazy cash. Everything a god does is righteous, after all.

Sunshine Struggle

Crazy Cat machines dot the Sunshine City complex in Ikebukuro. The machines here are attracting some particularly nasty ayakashi: jealous little purple creatures with too many legs that stoke buyers' envy and need for more and better collectibles. Under their influence, it's not just the Cats going fast. The local stores are selling out of everything cute on the shelves.

Worse, some of the ayakashi victims are turning to theft when they run out of pocket money. Time to exterminate those bugs before they start a new crime wave.

Taking Stock

Accident? Sabotage? No one's telling, but a delivery truck carrying boxes of new keychains to restock the machines blew a tire and overturned on a major street. Under the influence of those greedy little ayakashi, collectors are descending on the wreck to snag their favorites before the police show up.

The dazed driver doesn't know what to do, the crowd is starting to get violent, and those Cats do look amazingly cute. And appealing. And, for that matter, valuable.

Bad Kitty

The cat keychains are super cute! Even gods or shinki might be tempted to buy one and take it home, but taking these keychains back to the Far Shore will give away their hidden secret. It's not just human envy that's attracting ayakashi to the Crazy Cats. There are ayakashi hiding inside this batch of cute kitty dolls, and bringing them through a shrine to the Far Shore will force the hidden creatures out of their plushie prisons.

They're big, they're mad, and they're hungry. And the Heavens are full of souls that smell delicious.

The ayakashi escaping from Crazy Cat dolls on the Far Shore resemble gigantic (taller than a person at the shoulder) versions of the cute plushie cats, with very real and sharp teeth and claws. They run and attack at random once released from the dolls, so even gods and shinki who did not bring the toys back could be faced with a fight. The patrolling shinki will do their best to hold them back with borderlines, but they need help to rend these crazy cats before they do too much damage!

In Summary:

• Placate the crowds
• Squash bitty ayakashi
• Struggle with temptation
• Defeat the cat invasion
• Have fun~

Comments

[fortunesmiles]

And you lost it?

[It'll take more than blatant negative social cues to dissuade Komaeda, king of terrible conversations.]

[kokuyoyo]

[Hey, Komaeda, how do you feel about being kicked?]

[Because it's sure happening right towards your ankles]

[fortunesmiles]

[And that is Komaeda, receiving a spiteful kick to the ankle. His godly abilities don't seem to be able to affect luck as it applies to him directly, and his natural luck functions rather unpredictably - in this case, apparently, his luck doesn't care one way or the other what happens to his ankles. Komaeda winces, but Chikusa would have to go more out of his way to knock him over so he doesn't lose his balance or anything. He'll just have a bruise.]

I see you're angry...

[kokuyoyo]

[Komaeda should just be glad poison wasn't busted out. Then again, Chikusa's temper can almost be as unpredictable as Komaeda's luck. Sometimes it takes a little bit to spur it, and then other days it takes nothing at all.]

[Chikusa's dull gaze doesn't give away which he'll go with, even as he reaches up to nudge his glasses up again.]

....you're annoying.

[fortunesmiles]

You're the one who criticized me, you know.

[kokuyoyo]

....I'm still criticizing you.

[fortunesmiles]

You can hardly complain about my having a vague goal in mind when you are, by your own admission, in between specific goals and have only a vague direction yourself.

Or I guess I should say you can do that, and you are doing that, but you shouldn't get so offended over my pointing out you're being kind of hypocritical. It's no more offensive than you were being to me, right?

[kokuyoyo]

I can be more offensive.

[chikusa no]

Those sort of things are different anyway....

[fortunesmiles]

I wasn't really looking to start a contest...although if you asked my friends, I think they'd bet against you there. [A flash of self-awareness from Komaeda, perhaps. Combined with very dark humor.]

Different how?

[kokuyoyo]

One.... is a transition. Yours... is vague by definition.

So they're different. [At least, he's stubborn on this.]

[fortunesmiles]

Hmm...maybe, but I think your goal is just as vague as mine in practice, isn't it? If you just want to find out things...there's a million different things to find out, aren't there? Even if you're doing it for a specific reason, or a specific person, the goal is still just as vague and general as mine.

I really don't know what's wrong with that in the first place, though. If there's so many ways to achieve a goal, doesn't that mean there's very few ways to fail? If I make myself useful to people in any way, or you find out anything remotely of value...we've both already succeeded, at least partially, haven't we?

[kokuyoyo]

...Or there's a lot of different ways to fail.

[What the fuck is optimism- ]

...How does someone partially succeed anyway... If a goal is that vague, then how do you succeed?

[fortunesmiles]

Well, when it comes to finding things out...isn't the only way to fail not finding things out? So really there's only the one way to fail...

As for partial success, I mostly meant that there really isn't a set goal for either of us. You want to find out things, and I want to make myself useful...but there isn't any one specific thing that either of us could do for those goals to be definitively achieved, is there? So any information you gather is a partial success, because a complete success isn't possible.

...well, maybe there is one clear thing that could be called definitive success for me. If I could create Ultimate Hope...then I'd definitely have proved the worth of my existence!

[kokuyoyo]

In that case, the only way to fail is to lose every single one of your senses....

[Which can clearly happen, right? That, or outright dying.]

What would the Ultimate Hope even be....

[fortunesmiles]

Probably! So isn't that an encouraging thought? Where there's life, there's hope, as they say. [A beat passes, in which Komaeda either anticipates Chikusa's petulance or simply has the same rather morbid thought processes as him.] And even for a shinki who's dead, your senses still function, so you can still accomplish things, which means you can still hope.

As for the Ultimate Hope, isn't that obvious? The Ultimate Hope is a hope that can destroy any despair...even Ultimate Despair.

[kokuyoyo]

....I guess.... [ugh, logic] But wouldn't something like 'hope' or 'despair' be subjective...?

[fortunesmiles]

Well, it depends on your perspective. The Ultimate Despair of my world, Enoshima-chan...I suppose you could say that even she had hope, in a way, in that she hoped to spread her despair or to have her plans work. Likewise, the Ultimate Hope of my world who destroyed her...I'm sure even he felt despair at times.

Really, though, that's just the nature of hope and despair. You can't truly have one without the other. That's why even someone like me could potentially become Ultimate Hope...being Ultimate Hope doesn't mean a complete absence of despair. It just means having a hope strong enough to be able to destroy the strongest despair there is...!

I suppose, when you look at it like that...the biggest draw of potentially becoming Ultimate Hope is to be able to feel that much hope in something. To have a hope so strong that no despair can shake it...because even though one can't exist without the other, hope always overcomes despair in the end. Despair is meaningless...it's emptiness. All of existence is proof enough that something will always beat nothing, even if you need nothing to define the existence of something.

[kokuyoyo]

[That sure is a lot of philosophy he's hearing right now, but at least thinking is easy enough. Chikusa listens patiently to the rambling, even as his gaze drifts away a little bit.]

....So just existing... is "hope" by that loic...

[fortunesmiles]

Well, I suppose it would have to be, wouldn't it? Meaninglessness and emptiness tend to characterize despair, so by that logic, despair is essentially nothingness. So existence would have to be hope, and nonexistence could be classified as despair.

[kokuyoyo]

....But then.... That would mean deciding what is "meaningful", and what classifies as "empty".

[For example, even though he exists, he rarely feels intensely, and drifts through life without the guidance being Axel's exemplar gave him. Does that make him 'empty', and thus something of despair?]

[fortunesmiles]

I suppose it would. But that isn't really that difficult, is it? For something to be meaningful, it has to bring something worthwhile to the world. If it contributes nothing of value, or worse, actively subtracts from or destroys the worthwhile things in the world...then that would be meaningless. I suppose it's not as simple as good or evil, because even murdering someone could be meaningful if it was someone who made the world less worthwhile by being in it. And helping someone could be meaningless, if that person only spreads despair and misery.

Still, it should be easy enough to know if you're spreading hope or spreading despair.

[kokuyoyo]

....But some things can bring both.

[There's a slight shift throughout his body, as if he's debating on some sort of action, before he falls back into stillness.]

If you kill a person... That can bring hope to a second party while simultaneously causing despair in a third. So that sort of thing... Doesn't it equal out?

[fortunesmiles]

Hmm...well, even causing despair isn't inherently a bad thing all the time. Causing despair for despair's own sake is worthless, of course, but without despair, hope couldn't exist. It wouldn't even be necessary, and people could hardly perceive it without something to contrast it against. Overcoming despair is where the most powerful hope comes from, after all.

So even in your example...you'll have created hope for one party, and while the second may feel despair, I think it would have to be the kind of despair from which there's no recovery before that hope you create would be cancelled out! Eventually, the very act of finding hope and meaning even in the face of their grief may be a form of hope you create in that second party.

[kokuyoyo]

....Your face looks weird.

[In case you didn't know, Komaeda-]

So you're saying it all just balances out... anyway.

[fortunesmiles]

Does it? [Komaeda blinks. He doesn't necessarily realize how...intense the look on his face gets when he talks about hope and despair. It's not like he has a mirror.]

As for things balancing out...hope does always win against despair in the end. Don't they say nature abhors a vacuum? Emptiness, nothingness, meaninglessness...they exist, but they're only ever temporary. People die, and it's not like you can replace them, but you can move on. If you don't, and you die yourself, then others will move on from your death. At some point, the cycle of despair always comes to a halt, because it's impossible for it to win a lasting victory. Hope always stops it, sooner or later. I don't know if I'd say it balances out, exactly...it'd be more accurate to say that hope always wins. Not necessarily on an individual level, of course, but any chain of events leads to hope if you follow it far enough.