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

Bad Kitty

[kokuyoyo]

"Aren't you supposed to be powerful?"

Even as the words are said, a spray of needles suddenly shoots out to cover the ayakashi's back with each point glowing a soft dull blue. There's no way Chikusa can win in a battle against ayakashi with both of his gods not currently around... but that doesn't mean he can't slow them down, at the feline menace will soon learn. Sighing, he looks over to wear the book has been discarded.

"You suck at this."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"It's not MY fault it attacked out of order!" The book angrily flopped around, trying to right itself and failing because it was spending too much energy on being ridiculously indignant.

Also, Zetta hurt. Not significantly, but this whole 'blight' thing actually stung, the way things simply didn't do for an Overlord of his strength and power these days.

In Zetta's defense, though, his minions were actually doing a pretty good job -- now that the cartoonish dust had cleared -- of bashing the crap out of the ayakashi. The needles had helped, no mistake, but for now the creature was on lockdown as the small army surrounded it and wailed on it with their various weapons. Numbers were an advantage.

[kokuyoyo]

Well, as long as the numbers keep it distracted... Chikusa is fine with putting its presence on the backburner of his attention. Instead, he slouches over to where Zetta is still flopping around about as effectively as a fish on land. Normally, he'd poke him again with his shoe, but.... Blight isn't a good thing to toy with.

"Order is whoever can strike first," he mutters, squinting down. It's interesting to see blight on a book. "How's the blight?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"But attacking during pre-fight banter is extremely low-class. Lower than I'd expect of a Prinny, even." Finally getting it together, the Overlord drifted up into the air, a fierce scowl on his face. The blight didn't actually look too bad -- a slight discoloration, actually less than one would expect from such a solid scratch. The Overlord had more power to him than he looked. Maybe even as much as he claimed to have.

"I've got to Rend this damn thing, so you might want to be... Uh, not anywhere on the business end of me."

[kokuyoyo]

What pre-fight banter.... Wait. This is reminding him of something. Even as Chikusa is thinking carefully, he does at least listen and steps away from the book's "front".

"You know, with what you said just now.... Do you still think you're the strongest person here?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"'Thinking' doesn't enter the equation."

In a muttered undertone, because Zetta found the whole 'call name, get shinki' thing too ridiculously magical-girl to tolerate, he transformed his soulless shinki into a bookmark between the pages of the Sacred Tome.

"How much proof will it take before you get it into your head?"

[kokuyoyo]

"Well..." Lazily shrugging, he continues to watch the demon-turned-book. Or maybe he was always a book. Chikusa still isn't entirely sure on that point.

"There's someone else running around boasting how powerful he is... So it's a title that's in debate." Especially because Add sucks, but, whatever.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"If he's not even an Overlord," Zetta said, frowning at the ayakashi, "talk's cheap."

Like a flock of birds startled into a flurry of motion, the minion crowd abruptly scattered.

"ZETTA BEAM!"

A pair of singularly blasts lanced out from the book's eyes, slashing into the ground right below the ayakashi.

For about two-tenths of a second, Zetta appeared to have embarrassed himself utterly -- right before an explosion lit up the Far Shore with apocalyptic fury. A mushroom cloud bloomed a mile into sky as a shockwave roared out, disintegrating nearby buildings into so much atomic residue, cracking facades further out, shattering windows and blowing so much atmosphere away from above that the blackness of space loomed ominously above them, no longer shielded from view by the refracting properties of the sky.

"Hyaaha ha ha ha ha!"

The light swelled out of the great explosion, sweeping over everything until it was nothing but blinding radiance --

And then abruptly it faded, leaving behind a Far Shore untouched by any harm whatsoever. No buildings wrecked, no ominous stratospheric evacuations, not even so much as a scuff on the pavement where the beam had struck.

But, no ayakashi either.

[kokuyoyo]

Very, very quietly, Chikusa adjusts his hat from where it threatened to blow off of his head.

There's a lot he could say here. He could bring up how taking a step back wouldn't have been nearly enough for an explosion the size of what he thought would happen. He could ask if that was an actual real attack, or 90% illusion. He could bring things around right back to the initial point he'd wanted to make about Add.

Instead, what comes out of his mouth is a quiet, "Did you name your attack after yourself?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Well it's not anyone ELSE'S damn beam!" the book snapped.

[kokuyoyo]

God. God. It really is like dealing with another Add. "I think anyone can tell that... considering it's coming from your eyes..." Sighing, he moves on.

"Anyway.... Was any of that real...?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"What the hell -- 'was any of it real'?!" The question offended Zetta down to the core, because he didn't even understand it and anger was an excellent tool in his kit of reactions. "I just wipe a freaking enemy off the map and you ask if it's real?!"

[kokuyoyo]

A normal person might gesture widely around to how completely untouched the area is, but the best Chikusa bothers to do is incline his head slightly. "The enemy is gone.... but everything else isn't touched.... despite how that kind of attack is supposed to be powerful."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"...You want the actual explanation or the complicated explanation?"

Zetta kind of had a feeling the actual explanation would only provoke an argument, but hey.

[kokuyoyo]

There's a highly suspicious squint leveled Zetta's way.

"Wouldn't the complicated one be the actual one...?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Nope."

Zetta was pretty confident of his answer.

[kokuyoyo]

Somehow, for some reason, this sounds incredibly fake. Still, with another heaved out sigh, Chikusa has to admit that there's only one way to find out.

"Actual."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"It's a freaking attack animation! That's all!"

[kokuyoyo]

....Oh. So the book is out of his mind. Well, that explains everything, he guesses.

"So if that's the actual explanation," he says, words slow and steady as usual, devoid of most of what he's feeling, "then what were you planning on saying is the complicated one...?"

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"In the course of a true battle, all interactions are actually between the mana power of those involved," Zetta said. "Even you humans understand this on a subconscious level, which is why your video games and movies and stuff always have guns, knives, swords, rocket launchers, all that crap be equally effective in battle, even though you guys don't have enough mana power normally for it to be true. So when turning an attack against an opponent, the battle actually happens on a different level of reality than the purely physical."

[kokuyoyo]

On one hand, that does sound more complicated, but on the other, it seems almost too complicated to be sensible. "A true battle".... Whatever that even means. To Chikusa, it seems that a true battle is whatever affects a person.

Still, there's no point in arguing about it. "Okay," is the simple dull answer that doesn't seem to lean one way or the other. "Either way.... That seems like the kind of nonsense someone else here pulls.."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Zetta was starting to wonder about this guy, but hey -- he's a Sacred Tome, not a DSM-IV. "It's not surprising someone else around here could actually wield mana power competently."

[kokuyoyo]

"But not as competently as you, or something, right?" He's starting to wonder if he can bait this guy properly.... But oh well. He's not going to lose anything by trying.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Any demon can do it the way I do, it's natural for us. Just no one has more mana power or greater strength than me." Just... maybe more arms, which was a significant inconvenience at the moment.

[kokuyoyo]

Well, time to see... "Can you break time and space?" Chikusa tilts his head to the side. "The guy I know here... can do so easily. And claims himself as the best."

...Probably. Chikusa tries to give Add more attention than he warrants.