26 - The Gods' Month

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Helping the Heavens prepare for the yearly Meeting of the Gods
When: October 20 - 21
Where: Around the Heavens (and maybe some mortal shopping trips, too!)
Summary: Amaterasu has been told that the newly arrived residents of the Heavens want to take a bigger part in security and administration, so she's convinced her shinki to let them help with preparations for the big yearly gala. It's also time for shinki to rate their gods and gods to find out what their shinki really think of them....







Security Precautions

The white-robed shinki guards are working hard to secure the Meeting Hall for the arrival of all the gods of Japan. Hard-working shinki are scurrying everywhere! Despite Amaterasu's orders, they're still a little unsure of and standoffish towards the strangers who they're supposed to work with, but there's a lot of work to do, so they're happy to hand out jobs to small groups of newcomers before returning to their own duties.


• Help clear out any small spirits who might have sneaked back into the Meeting Hall after the spring cleaning, from sootsprites to nekomata, animal spirits from the park or well-camouflaged plant spirits.


• Check the magical writing worked into art or inlaid in wood all over the building to protect the Meeting Hall from attack, and make sure none of it is scuffed or damaged.


• Join in on the patrols around the building or spend some time guarding one of the gates. It's boring, but the shinki appreciate the help.


• Test the integrity and extent of the magical protections with glass balls that turn purple outside the protections on the Meeting Hall and clear inside them. But don't drop your glass ball! They're fragile.

Event Preparation

It's not just security that the shinki are asking newcomers to help with. They also have plenty of work to do getting ready for the festivities! The Meeting Hall floors need to be swept and scrubbed, the gardens need to be trimmed and tidied, artwork needs to be dusted, flower arrangements arranged, damaged furniture repaired and rafters cleared of cobwebs. Anyone with particularly good handwriting can help write out invitations and name cards, too.

Besides cleaning and calligraphy, there's lots of food and beverages to purchase! Grab a shopping list, a wad of cash, and head to the Near Shore to pick up the necessities. (Don't forget to keep the receipts.)

Rate Your God

Shinki have the opportunity to submit surveys on their life with their new gods before the big event, and even request a transfer if they want one. Early in the morning, every new shinki will be visited by a small white dove carrying a scroll that, when unrolled, reveals the following questionnaire:


What is your name?

What is your god's name?

How do you see your duties as a shinki?

What is your favorite part of life with your god?

What is your least favorite part of life with your god?

What advice would you like to give your god?

Do you wish to be assigned to a different god? []Y []N


Fill it out, discuss it with your fellow shinki, forget about it until you find it under a pile of junk mail in two months: the choice is yours! Gods will receive a copy of the answer that their shinki submit to "What advice would you like to give your god?" -- there's no name attached, but they might be able to guess.

Heavenly Record Keeping

Gods don't get to skip the paperwork entirely! Although the Heavens aren't asking them to rate their shinki, new gods don't have all of their vital statistics on file quite yet, so they get a questionnaire too. The same white doves will drop their scrolls by in the morning, with the following set of questions:


What is your name?

How many shinki do you currently have?

What are your areas of divine responsibility?

How do you see your duties as a god?

What traits do you most want in a shinki?

Do you wish new shinki to be assigned to you? []Y []N


Unlike the doves attending on the shinki, the doves who drop off the gods' scrolls will remain close by and chirp loudly until they finish and submit their questionnaires. If a god is particularly lazy about it, they might even start pecking.

In Summary:

• Help protect the Meeting Hall
• Lend a hand cleaning and shopping
• Rate your gods
• Help Heaven keep its records up to date
• Have fun~

Comments

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Naw, people just... look past me. It's weird. [And a little insulting, but it probably beats being gawked at and provoking confrontations that would end up in violence and chaos.]

[The minion shrugs as if to reflect the Overlord's statement, even as they turn to head towards a small little restaurant that even from here seems to heat the air around it.]

[unlucky7]

[Well, if it works. There's a lively atmosphere to the restaurant, already busy with the after-work crowd. Still, it doesn't take too long for them to get seated--the server doesn't even blink with Ginia requests seating for two--at a booth.]

What do you recommend?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[Don't ask him how it works, but it does. Pretty handy, he has to admit, and it spares him a lot of grief. He might need to remember this sort of trick when he gets himself properly settled back in.]

What's your spice tolerance? They have some pretty sweet heat here.

[unlucky7]

I don't know. [She hasn't had a chance to try spicy food since starting her life as a shinki, and if she knew in the past, it's all clearly moot. Ginia glances at the menu, noting the different levels of spiciness.]

I'll start with the mild one and go from there.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[That's a little disappointing, but hey -- nowhere on this world has he found something to compare to his preferred selection of Netherdactyl wings so spicy they distort the air around them.] I'm going hotter, so you can have a taste and see how it does for you.

[unlucky7]

[Sure, sure, works for her. After mulling over the menu a little longer, Ginia settles on a basket of wings with fries and waves down a server to put in her order.

After sitting for a few minutes, Ginia takes her jacket off, bits of soot falling to the ground as she folds it up and sets it aside. Zetta's earlier guess was right; she's in excellent shape. Her arms have the muscles of a rock climber and in a fitted t-shirt, her torso is looking good too.]

How'd the heist go after I left? Did you end up buying anything with the money?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[...Well, damn. Zetta can totally approve. And that approval may in fact influence his answer a bit.]

So far, dinner for a cute girl. [He grins across the table at her.]

[unlucky7]

[Ginia looks back with a light pout.]

Cute? I was hot earlier. I've either been downgraded or you took someone else out for dinner before me. Which one is it?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[Oh, now this is a little more like the adversarial struggling he'd been subconsciously expecting the entire time! Strangely, this seems to give Zetta even more energy.]

Neither! You can totally be both at the same time! In fact, there's a LOT of good adjectives for you!

[unlucky7]

I want to hear the adjectives you have in mind for me.

[Her pout turns into a faint smile, slightly challenging. Whatever he's about to say, Ginia has a hunch it'll be no different than their earlier conversation.]

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Ripped.

[Bet that wasn't the first one she had in mind, but after she'd taken off her jacket, it's pretty high up in Zetta's.]

Seriously, have you got a six-pack going under that shirt?

[unlucky7]

[It wasn't, and her eyes widen slightly for a second, her smile a bit more real. Ripped. Huh. But it's true,and at his question, serious or not, Ginia stands, lifts her shirt just enough to show off and maybe a bit more to tease, and tightens her muscles.

Damn right she does.]

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[Damn.]

[Good thing for the Far Shore cloak of being unnoticeable -- that would have drawn the eyes of every guy and probably a few girls in the place.]

[The Netherworld is an interesting place. A lot of girls there run off the Gothic-lolita sort of imprint. Then you have succubi and catgirls, who are almost comedic in their, uh, feminine proportions. Zetta had historically favored women who were both elegant and curvy, whose strength came from their mana power rather than sheer physical might.]

[So damned if he isn't surprised to find Ginia's mixture of curvy and powerful is really something else.]

[He lets out a low, appreciative whistle at the sight.] Yeah, that added a few adjectives to the pile. Or uh... adverbs? You know, going from 'hot' to 'damn hot'?

[unlucky7]

[Ginia's fingers give one last teasing trace over the lines of her muscles before she lowers her shirt and sits down. There was a time in her forgotten life when she was leaner, beauty running more toward a specific set of standards controlled by a strict diet and regiment of nanites. But you don't teach a person how to hold a rifle or free climb without building up some muscle, and when a caged tiger is free and has their choice of prey...

Well, Ginia knows she's hot. She knows she's attractive, that her silhouette is just as attractive to some as the lines of her muscles are to others and she knows none of it really matters, not to her. Beauty is just another tool at her disposal to support her already existing regiment of skills and there's no joy in the praise or attention.

And just slightly, Ginia feels a little bit sad.

Also maybe it'd be a bit more flattering if the praise wasn't coming from a talking book.

All the same, she smiles. The server drops off some glasses of water without much fanfare, arriving and departing with a courteous smile. Ginia sips at her glass as she stretches out on her side of the booth.]

Enough about me, I want to know more about you and the whole ruler of the Netherworld thing.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[She's using that tool pretty effectively on Zetta, for what it's worth. Who may be a book, but still has the mind of a red-blooded male who knows what he likes!]

[And hey, eventually he'll have his body back.]

Me, huh? That's one of my favorite topics. I've been an Overlord since I was five hundred years old or so.

[unlucky7]

[It's an absolute shock Zetta likes to talk about himself. A complete stunner. But she is surprised at the scale of time because... huh.]

Since five hundred? How old are you?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Somewhere around thirty-five thousand.

[He says this so casually, too.]

We demons -- uh, rough guess, a normal demon runs about a hundred years for one human year. So our thousand-year old kids are what a ten year old human kid would be, or so? [The figure is rough and many factors complicated it a great deal more, but there it is.] But past a certain level of strength, you're too strong for Death, so it stops being a concern normally.

[unlucky7]

[Holy. Shit.]

Looking good for a book your age. No yellowing pages, cover is intact, not a lot of bent pages or cracked spine.

[She jokes if only to deflect. For someone who can't remember she died at twenty-seven, it's hard imagining thousands of years, let alone a hundred. It's fascinating and sobering and there's a slight uptick in respect for him. There's respect to be paid for a long life lived.]

At what point did you become a book?

[He had mentioned it was a temporary setback, though temporary now could included thousands of years.]

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[Oh wonderful! Book jokes! The Overlord scowls with his usual meaningless anger.] FIRST of all, this isn't just any book. This is the Sacred Tome! Everything that ever was, is, or will be in the universe is written within it, so you damn well better believe it's in pretty good shape. Second, it's been like two weeks! I had to bind my soul to the damn book to prevent its destruction, and that was when I ended up here, too.

[unlucky7]

[Okay! Okay! Ginia raises her hands and smiles apologetically. Two weeks was far less time than she thought, so the touchiness is understandable. But wow, an interesting book. To have everything in the universe written in it...

Wait.]

If everything is written in that book, does that mean it knew you were going to bind your soul to the book to prevent its destruction and end up here?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

Good question. Someone had clearly tampered with the damn thing, and I didn't read that far!

[Because he'd set it on fire, he doesn't mention.]

[unlucky7]

[Ginia has a tiny prickle of doubt about his statement, but the thought is put aside as their food arrives. It's hard to go wrong with a generous portion of hot wings and fries and without having eaten much that day, Ginia descends on her basket.

It's delicious food; the fries are thick cut steak fries with a light crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Her wings are mild, but the sauce still adds a nice tangy flavor to the moist meat. Finger food doesn't lend itself to typing--thank goodness for the stack of napkins and wet wipes--so Ginia doesn't both trying to hold a conversation as she eats. As her basket of wings becomes more a pile of bones, she points at one of his hot wings. Mind letting her have a try?]

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[Hey, give him credit: Zetta knew what he was doing when he picked this place.]

[Of course, his own eating is a bit complicated, since he has to basically get fed by his minion -- and how does a book even eat, anyway? The logistics of the situation aside, though, Zetta is absolutely unembarassed by his unusual needs, soldiering through a pile of wings so hot that they assault her nostrils from across the table.]

[If she's still game after smelling that? Go for it! He flicks a corner of his cover at her to give her permission.]

[unlucky7]

[The nanotechnicians responsible for the tech running through Ginia's body accounted for a lot; pain dampeners, blood filtration, muscle and bone reinforcement, a lot of thought and technology went into keeping an operative running.

However, capsaicin is tricky. While her tech kicks in to reduce the sting in her eyes and nose--can't have an operative go down to a hit of pepper spray after all--the scientists didn't take food into consideration.

The first bite hurts. It's a merciless, unrelenting burn that leaves her eyes watering, nose running, and gasping for air as she forces herself to swallow. There's no relief from drinking water and she suffers through the pain, sucking in air as she furiously wipes her hands off on the wet wipes.

The spicy wings hurt, but they also hurt real good. It's nice While jumping straight into Zetta's basket of wings was a bit much, she's definitely not opposed to stepping up her next basket a few levels.

Once her hands are clean, she uses some napkins to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, mouth still rolling in heat. She sucks in a few more deep breaths as she types up a message.]

That was a bit much, but I think I like spicy food. It's a good kind of pain.

[badassfreakingoverlord]

[And just think: Zetta considers these mild. Proper wings are so spicy they distort the air around them.]

[Demons have interesting tastes, and badass Overlords even more so.]

[The reaction said a lot about her own expectations and tolerances; Zetta watches it curiously, learning a few things in the process. Not really consciously -- Zetta tends to run more on instinct and intuition than conducting any logical analysis of a person from their behavior -- but he definitely gets the impression that her spice tolerance is fairly high. She took those like a champ, really.]

Hyaaaha ha ha ha! You understand exactly! Properly spicy food is like winning a war of conquest and attrition!