thenearshore | [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

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.]

[ 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.

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.

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.

There are ways more likely to work.

[And less likely to provoke Fuujin, although, to be fair, if Kaede had stopped him from making an example out of Judar once already, she might not be as unwelcoming to the flirtation as Hakkai would have guessed.]

Although I suppose if that is working for you, good luck and stay away from her god.

Sure. Why only go one way, though?

[ That's just one of the things he's been doing to terrorize the heavens, it seems. ]

Yeah, anyone could figure out that they should stay away from that old wind bag. At least I've got more than borderlines to protect me.

It's the safety of that particular technique I'm concerned about... but what else do you have to protect yourself with?

[He raises a curious eyebrow.]

Magic?

Some kind of magic, yeah. Except I don't have to cast it- It kind of just happens when I want.

[ Which is handy if he gets separated from his wand. While unsure of whether or not Hakkai could see or sense these kinds of things, as it didn't seem visible until something struck it the previous times, Judar manifests the spherical shield around himself. ]

Good against shinki spells, glowing daggers and anything else coming at me.

[There's no visual change, but Hakkai feels power rising in the air, frowns thoughtfully, and picks a grape from a late-autumn bunch sitting in the fruit basket on the table.

He pitches it at Judar, overhand and fast, to see what happens.]

[ Out of reflex, Judar flinches from the overhead action. Despite the knowledge that he did put that shield/barrier thing up already. Which is a little annoying and embarrassing to do, but he didn't know how to change it just yet.

Either way, the grape smacks into something a couple of feet out from Judar, having the sphere of energy illuminate in response before fading out again. Still there, but on standby once again. ]

Like I said- anything.

Sorry, sorry-- [Judar had flinched, after all.] -- I just wanted to test it!

That's a remarkable defense.

[Especially if "anything" includes both magical and physical attacks. A grape wouldn't have hurt Judar if it had struck him, but a dagger? Well.]

[ At least Hakkai wasn't a 'twice for flinching' sort of person. ]

Yeah, I figured. If I knew it wouldn't say much about how quick and easy it is for defense.

[ Despite the flinch, it's not like he thought anything bad would happen. Saru's daggers were a more regular danger to him than anything else. ]

[When he's training someone not to flinch, perhaps. When he's just testing their defenses, once will do.]

And you said it'd stop anything at all?

Magic's more likely to break it, but I can always remake the whole thing. It feels like I'm missing something, but it'll do until I figure that something out.

[ Like there's something else his body's ready to continue with, but the rest of him has no idea what. ]

That's how I relearned my skills when I was a shinki. I felt as if there were things I should be able to do, but I couldn't remember exactly what they were.

Practice helps.

[He pauses, and adds, thoughtfully:] A situation that gives you no time to think can help, too.

[ Oh, that took a turn that he doesn't like the idea of. Or the idea of what that could translate into being. Primarily because, not knowing much about Hakkai, it comes down to the things he'd do after saying that. ]

That sounds like my signal to return to my temple.

[Would he? Oh, certainly not.

At least not right now. Judar didn't come here to have his abilities tested, after all. Hakkai laughs, with his usual slightly artificial lilt, and inclines his head.]

Well, if you'd like! Thank you for stopping by. It's been interesting talking to you.

Yeah... Sure it has.

[ Sounds as fake as that laugh, but okay. He's just gonna give an overhanded and casual wave while getting out of there. Judar might be okay with offering himself as a shinki if something happened to Izumo, or he was tossed away, but until then? Observing from a healthy distance.

As in, he's going to go back to studying and forget all about that until the next time they cross paths. ]

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

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