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

[reformedsinner]

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....]

Comments

[kuroi_taiyo]

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?

[reformedsinner]

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.

[kuroi_taiyo]

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. ]

[reformedsinner]

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.

[kuroi_taiyo]

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.

[reformedsinner]

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.

[kuroi_taiyo]

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.

[reformedsinner]

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.]

[kuroi_taiyo]

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. ]

[reformedsinner]

[Hakkai laughs easily.]

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

[kuroi_taiyo]

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.

[reformedsinner]

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.

[kuroi_taiyo]

Then I'll just have to do better than just mastering it.

[ Because he'd rather hit Fuujin extra hard in the pride, knowing that some outsider shinki could perform better at his own specialty. ]

Just for the look on his face when I do.

[ It's also very satisfying to find even more people that don't like Fuujin. ]

[reformedsinner]

You've met, I see. [There's a certain murderous glint that people who have met Fuujin have.

Hakkai recognizes it, and, as a former target of the "exploding tornado chase" technique, he appreciates it. A lot.]

I look forward to it.

[kuroi_taiyo]

Yeah. He didn't approve of an outsider talking to him or his shinki.

[ Well, it's more of what Judar had said that roused up Fuujin's wrath. ]

All I did was point out that his concern was at a bad time and sounded like he disapproved of the leader's decisions. Not the best thing if people have been attacking her.

[reformedsinner]

That sounds a little like the first time I met him, in fact. He'd told me I was a failure for not protecting my first goddess -- she'd disappeared -- and I asked if that meant he was a failure for not protecting Amaterasu.

[Hakkai attempts a very innocent expression.]

That's when the exploding tornadoes appeared.

[kuroi_taiyo]

You'd think that it's getting to be a problem when multiple people are telling him similar things, but I guess he doesn't care enough for that. Just enough to get angry.

[ Judar might've had a similar fate for his own stunt, but luckily there were others around. ]

At least it meant I could get more personal with Kaede.

[ Physically personal, as in within her personal bubble. He wouldn't mind being around her with that windbag out of the picture for a while. ]

[reformedsinner]

How personal have you been getting with Kaede?

[And just how much is Fuujin really likely to want this boy dead?]

[kuroi_taiyo]

Just my arm around her. Offered to go and have some fun with her. That's all.

[ So, Fuujin almost certainly wants to murder this one. What can he say- he's an extrovert. ]

[reformedsinner]

That doesn't strike me as the kind of strategy she'd appreciate.

[He tsks mildly, shaking his head.

Yes, he does expect Judar to have some short-term practical experience with the exploding tornado technique. That is, if he hasn't gotten to see it already. Fuujin seemed even more humorless when it comes to Kaede than he does when it comes to, well, anything else.]

[kuroi_taiyo]

She did get flustered up. Ah, but she was way cuter with the way she stopped Fuujin from doing anything.

[ Fuujin had absolutely no room for humor when it involved his exemplar. Luckily she's the one that had more control than Fuujin did on these kinds of things. Which is a large part of what made her attractive and a good target.

Even if she was acting on pity and trying to keep Fuujin from destroying the reception. ]

Maybe now that we're in the same district, I'll have to thank her.

[ Judar is definitely the type that likes to stir up trouble. ]

[reformedsinner]

Careful. At that rate, you're going to wind up dead long before anything happens to Izumo.

[His tone is dry. Kaede's not going to save Judar if he comes to bother her at the temple.]

[kuroi_taiyo]

[ That was true, and Izumo had given him a goal that required figuring out more of his magic to utilize. Something that was proving trickier to manage because most of what he could figure out involved wind as one of the elements.

Despite all of that, Judar gives a rather nonchalant shrug, as if that outcome wouldn't affect much. ]

Could be worth it. Besides, he's got two other shinki around, so he'll still have access to everything he needs. I've got everything I learned and figured out recorded somewhere.

[reformedsinner]

May I say, while meaning absolutely no insult to Kaede, that I don't think it's going to be worth it.

[There are a lot of pretty faces in the Heavens, and most of them belong to smart, capable, charming people.

Very few of them will get a man crushed to death by a tornado wielding a tree if he engages in ill-timed flirtation.]

It's easy enough to die here. Risking it for something like that is a waste.

[kuroi_taiyo]

You really don't see the appeal in getting close to an old god's exemplar?

[ Kaede was more than just pretty and had a firm hand against Fuujin. She was potential access, or a good test, for other things he was working on. Everything else would be a bonus.

He may also be doing this as a point to purposely goad the wind god. Who knows at this point. ]

The others I've seen aren't as easy to come across or good looking.