thenearshore | [open] we're closed to the earth until further notice

Entry tags:

[open] we're closed to the earth until further notice

Who: Cho Hakkai and you
When: Oct 15-17
Where: Around the Near and Far Shores
What: The best way to deal with stress is to stay so busy that there's no time to think about it, right? No flaws in this plan.
Warnings: Ayakashi-fighting violence in the Oct. 16 PM prompt, probable mention of illness/death in the Oct. 16 AM prompt, mention of suicide in Gojyo thread

Oct. 15 - Gardening, Temple of Li Tieguai

[Mid-morning finds Hakkai in old clothes and rubber gardening clogs at the front of his temple, where bright yellow chrysanthemums have bloomed all around the outside wall. He has a stack of cheap plastic pots, a trowel, and a wheelbarrow half full of pots filled with freshly uprooted flowers, and he's leaving a long series of sad little pits in the turf behind him.

It's not that he minds flowers, of course. Flowers are fine.

It's just that he's noticed the way these particular flowers seem to be influencing his mood, and he doesn't like it at all.

He sits back on his heels as someone approaches, and wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand, leaving a long streak of mud there instead.]

Good morning! Would you like a potted plant?

Oct. 16 (AM) - Prayers, around Tokyo

[Tokyo's crowded on Sunday mornings, even on a gray and rainy day like this one, where the first gold and orange leaves of fall have been beaten down from the trees and are fading to soggy brown in the gutters and the canals. Hakkai slips through the crowds like a shadow, messenger bag over one shoulder as he scrolls through his phone calendar and snuggles his transparent umbrella closer down over his head. It's not doing much to keep the water off; he keeps having to dry his phone screen on his sleeve, to the annoyance of the small white dragon snuggled down on his scarf.

Chirps of complaint trail in his wake, and he looks up from his phone to murmur to the dragon quietly.

Unfortunately, that means he's not looking where he's going anymore, and in a crowd like this, if anyone's standing still--

-- well, they've just been run into by a man, a dragon, an umbrella, and a very heavy bag.]

Oct. 16 (PM) - Leech Treatment, Ikebukuro

[Hakkai hadn't really planned to wind up doing any fighting today. He has a long list of followers he needs to visit. He's busy, damn it, but a bloated purple leech-thing had detached itself from the neck of a glazed-over pachinko player as he brushed past and lunged for his face.

He hadn't had a choice, which he plans to point out to Chikusa if this gets him in trouble, considering that he also hadn't brought any of his shinki.

The leech is determinedly crawling towards him across the concrete. He aims a kick at it, and it dodges with surprising speed and bites at his toe, leaving an ugly, deep scar across the leather of his shoe. Jeep, reluctantly, lifts off his shoulder and circles up above the umbrella as Hakkai considers the stubborn ayakashi.

This is not the afternoon he'd planned on.]

Oct. 17 - Morning Classes, Abandoned Temple School - Mingle

[Hakkai doesn't always show up for the morning shinki spell practice sessions, but he's here today, sitting towards the side of the courtyard and taking notes in a battered memo book in between circulating to help with borderline or Bind spells. He'll occasionally stop, too, to listen in if anyone's talking about other spells. He'd only bothered to learn Bind himself, after all. It might help to learn a few extra....]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Interesting. [Hakkai's tone is just as mild, fangs or no fangs.

It's more than interesting; it's unsettling, that someone would perceive his limiters as keeping out something that changes him into this form. They feel like they muffle his senses and his energy, from the inside, rather than cutting him off from something outside.

The offer does, oddly, ease the sense that he's on display. He pulls the limiters back out of his pocket, with a flicker of his eyebrows, and reaches to replace them.]

If you need a place to stay in the future, we could discuss it. You'd have to convince me you could be helpful, of course.

[ Tomayto, Tomahto, it's all different ways to the same ends of him being kept from that full potential. ]

I mean, how helpful will depend on how much you want to take or turn over the Heavens.

[ He'd be more subtle if they were more outside, or where one of the original god's ears reached. However this was inside a new god's temple, and probably more secure than some other places. Also, he's gone about letting himself have a particular reputation that he can say things and people will brush it off without thinking its really serious. ]

Izumo'd have to disappear completely for me to even think about that, though.

[ He's a loyal person, surprisingly. Enough where he'd repeat that this would only be a possibility in that circumstance. He's only thinking of potentials because of how people said that it's common for gods and shinki to disappear without a trace. ]

[Perhaps some people would have brushed off a comment like that. Taking over the Heavens? Who would do such a thing?

Hakkai, instead, finishes securing the last of his limiters, blinking as the world settles back into the slightly fuzzier, slightly dulled version of itself that his more human senses can perceive, and smiles cheerfully.]

I certainly hope he doesn't. He's been a useful man to know, and we don't have so many teachers we can afford to lose any.

On the other hand, if he does, come find me.

[He could use a shinki with that kind of ambition.]

... He's a teacher too, on top of everything else? Guess I shouldn't be surprised that he's that much of a busybody.

[ He rarely sees Izumo sleep, and this is someone who barely sleeps themselves despite only being limited to one cup of coffee a day. Such is the limit set by the god himself.

He knows better than to give someone with that much magic power and ability a caffeine rush. ]

But yeah, sure. I'll check you out if it does. Maybe check to see what other shinki you have to see if I feel like working with them.

[ Alas, how often is there someone who wants to work with Chikusa, who isn't Ken? Especially when Chikusa spent that shinki's first day attacking them with borderlines and casting shinki spells on them. ]

He does work hard, doesn't he? [And occasionally knocks himself flat for days as a result.]

And we'll see. Hopefully, it won't be necessary in any case. [He inclines his head, smiling.

Working with Chikusa and Ken might be a harder sell, considering Chikusa's general attitude.]

Yeah. Probably better that he's talking about a vacation with someone else.

[ Not that he's about to share who the someone else is, or at least not yet, but he can at least calm suspicions about Izumo only knowing how to work. ]

Yeah. If I have things done right, he'll stay around for a long time. More than long enough to shake things up around here.

I look forward to seeing what you have planned.

[His tone is light and cheerful.

He'll probably have to keep an eye on Judar, though. Just in case. While Hakkai doesn't have a problem with actions against the Heavens, as such, the collateral damage does sometimes get troublesome.]

In any case, was there anything else you wanted to see? I don't want to keep you too long....

[ Hakkai doesn't want to keep him too long? Maybe it's him reading in this too much with the expectation of people not wanting his presence for very long, but he has a feeling that meant something a little different. ]

Nothing that I know you'd be a good choice to go to about. I've already gotten weird looks at the school for being unfamiliar with things that are supposed to be 'basic' to most people.

[ Really, it was his fault for going to the school at all. At this point he's assuming that no one has anything different to offer. ]

I'll just head on back and float around like I was doing before. Probably work on formulas or the weird shinki magic again. Have fun with limiting yourself, for whatever reason that is.

"Basic"? Like what? [Hakkai sounds mildly offended.]

Considering how many of us come here from places where we've never had the chance to use -- for instance -- a cell phone, that's quite rude.

[He'll just... skip that last comment entirely. It's none of Judar's business why he wears his limiters, and it's not an argument he wants to have, either. It would not end well for anyone.]

[ See, this brings about an internal debate. He doesn't want more people having a similar reaction, but it already seems like Hakkai was ready to accept how basic to some isn't actually basic for everyone. ]

... The whole thing with there being multiple languages through the world.

[ If it helps, the last comment wasn't meant to lead into an argument in the first place. He honestly doesn't know why the guy chooses to keep them on, and that was the end of it. ]

Interesting. You must come from an unusual world.

[That there would be only one language, through the entire world... Hakkai has had to pick up enough of several to barter, just in the course of their journey.]

When it's difficult to travel from place to place, or speak to people in distant places, different dialects and languages arise over time.

See?

[ That's exactly what he's talking about, though Hakkai was having a considerably more muted reaction. Lavi acted like he heard the sky was ground or something equally ridiculous. ]

You say that and I can just shrug about it. Everyone here in 'heaven' can understand each other and seem to use the same words. So how's my world so unusual if that's how it is here?

If you can answer a question like this... how long do you think it should take for someone to travel from one end of the world to the other? And how long has it been that way?

[Hakkai's smile holds a note of amusement at Judar's frustration.]

How long...

[ There's a crease in his forehead as Judar tries to think about that. Yet delving too deeply gave that internal sense saying he shouldn't press so hard. Hakkai's expression wasn't exactly helping with the frustration, either. ]

Don't know. It'd depend on how you were traveling, though. I guess it could take anywhere from months, if not longer, to within a day?

It's taken me years to travel across, hmm, approximately the width of my own home country. And I'm afraid that's by one of the faster methods of travel we have available.

[Besides dragonback, which isn't exactly available to the masses. He's briefly distracted by contemplation of whether traveling with Jeep technically is dragonback, but shakes his head, dismissing the question, and glances up at Judar.]

-- There's no need to think too deeply about it, but either your world is smaller than many of ours, or your travel is so much faster that one language can predominate.

I feel like someone walking and taking a boat would make it around this world faster than it took you for just one country. Either you weren't traveling most of the time, or your home is bigger than this place.

[ He's been learning a bit about what this world is capable of, however. So the modern convenience is confusing the parts of his shinki head as to why the contradictions didn't actually mesh as well as he'd like it to. ]

This world has better transportation and better roads than my own.

[Also, significantly fewer roving bands of youkai assassins.]

But that's a very recent development, and it's had time to develop many, many languages before transportation grew so quick.

Apparently, many of them are already being lost.

Sure.

[ Like he said- boats and walking sounded faster. ]

So it's the case of the 'stronger' language survives and the 'weak' ones fade into obscurity.

Give or take a few wars, occupations... yes, effectively.

[He shrugs easily.]

It's not hard for me to believe a whole world could have just one language, eventually.

Then you're one of the few that could accept it so easily.

[ Not that Lavi fought the idea too harshly, but Hakkai didn't really respond with disbelief. Which put him ahead of everyone so far. ]

Which is weird in a world that can print functional weapons.

I'm surprised by that. Although, perhaps, it depends on how many different worlds a person has heard about.

[Compared to tiny injected robots and spaceships, one language over a whole planet doesn't seem too strange. The power of conquest and murder to destroy a language is unquestionable.]

People are just... Close-minded. Most of the time.

[ He certainly can't say all people were. ]

Which is really dumb, given that we're all pulled from other worlds into a heaven that has us using the same language anyway.

[ Bitter? No, he's not bitter at all. ]

[Hakkai laughs easily.]

Well, I certainly can't disagree with that. It's been an... enlightening experience for me.

Then maybe-

[ Ah, he was going to continue, but it must've started to stray too close to the truth or lead into a bad cycle, because he just shakes his head and gives a shrug of the shoulders. ]

Well, it doesn't really matter that much anyway. If people are going to keep that up, I'll just figure out a spell destructive and dangerous enough to make them learn to keep it to themselves. Maybe explosive tornadoes that chase after a person.

Fuujin is good at those.

[He makes a cheerful, thoughtful little noise, accepting the change of topic. It's possible that thinking about one language versus many had gotten too close to Judar wondering about his own past.]

If you master it, I hope you have the chance to cast it on him, at least once.

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