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

[artificialrose]

...So... you think people shouldn't work together? Since that's basically what it boils down to...

[Is he going to have a philosophical discussion about human nature with a half teeanger half dog? God he hopes not. But he is, apparently.]

[junkyarddog]

No, that's dumb. Kakipi and I work together all the time, byon. [Ken rolls his eyes.] But you can't trust most people, especially strangers. And there'll always be people who need to steal stuff, or just want to steal stuff, and if it's too much of a hassle to stop 'em then just deal with getting some stuff stolen. If people had made it so me and Kakipi couldn't steal stuff when we were little, we would've starved. We needed that stuff way more than the stores did. So if it's too much of a pain to keep their stuff safe, then stores should just get used to some stuff getting stolen sometimes, 'cause they can't have stuff that's safe and easy for people to get to.

[artificialrose]

[Garry is about to try and explain the concept of people being social creatures, and how working together to do the minimum of ruining each other's lives is really better for everyone in the long run...]

[...Except then Ken goes and says that.]

[He freezes up for a moment, brain stumbling, before he tentatively asks the only thing that comes to mind.]

Ken, are you... alright?

[junkyarddog]

[Ken blinks bemusedly at Garry. From his perspective, that question came out of nowhere.] I'm fine. What're you worried about?

[artificialrose]

Most people don't have to steal. If you have to do that, or else that you would starve, it means.... something isn't right.

[There are a lot of things not right with Ken Joshima, honestly. Garry just hasn't been sure how to approach any of them.]

You have enough food now, don't you?

[junkyarddog]

We were born in a mafia famiglia, byon. [The Italian word rolls so easily off of Ken's tongue.] But they made such dangerous weapons that the rest of the mafia wanted to wipe them out, and just started exterminating them...so our famiglia took all us kids and tried to turn 'em into weapons, with experiments and stuff. Kakipi and I are the only ones who survived...I think. [His brow furrows a moment before he decides to stop thinking about it.] We'd probably have died too, but somebody killed 'em all...so we escaped. But the mafia wanted us dead still, 'cause we were weapons. And I guess technically still part of the Estraneo, even though we were just their lab rats. So we were on all the mafia hitlists, and we didn't have any kind of family anymore...and we were still little. So we had to look out for ourselves, byon.

And yeah, Hakkai-sama looks after us now, but it still feels weird not stealing stuff, byon. We've always stolen stuff. [After a moment, he huffs.] Besides, every place we steal from probably would've just let us starve as kids anyway, so why the hell should we care about giving them money?

[artificialrose]

[It feels like, recently, he's been getting a lot of information that he doesn't know how to deal with, and doesn't even know if he's the right kind of person to deal with it, honestly. It all feels so over his head. As far as Garry can tell, he's just a regular guy with nothing special to himself... No special powers or even the knowledge of his own background, like Ken clearly has.]

[But to say nothing, or do nothing... He doesn't feel like he can do that. So after a moment of wide eyed staring as he tries to process it all, Garry slowly reaches out to lightly touch Ken's arm.]

...Ken... It was wrong of those people to punish you, just because you were connected to someone else, right?

[junkyarddog]

[Ken looks puzzled by this.] They're the mafia, byon. They don't care if something's wrong or not. Lots of people don't care if something's wrong or not. All they care about is whether or not they can do it.

[Ken learned long ago that the only people who care about morality are the ones who choose to conform to it. And generally, it's a choice they can afford to make. He and Chikusa were never given an option to be moral; they could do what they needed to do to survive, or they could die. As they grew older, they had more choices, but their choices were usually dictated by what they could or couldn't pull off. But that just meant they were slowly able to do things they wanted to do, and not just the things they had no choice but to do if they wanted to keep breathing.

Ken hates the mafia, hates the people who tried - and presumably succeeded - to kill him and Chikusa. But he hates the Estraneo for what they did to him, too. Before he arrived at the Far Shore, he'd simply defaulted to hating and distrusting everyone who wasn't Chikusa. (Had there been someone else, too...?) Questions of right and wrong had never entered into it; survival didn't care about either. He'd never call the mafia, Estraneo or otherwise, right, but he'd never personally defined them as wrong. All that had mattered were that they were his enemies - that everyone was their enemies. Who cared if they were right or wrong? They wouldn't have laid down and died even if they'd been right.]

[artificialrose]

[Hrm. It's clear he's not quite getting through.]

Well, I suppose you're not wrong there... [The world is full of all sorts of people, and not all of them good. Still, he tries to change his wording a little.] Let me put it this way: do you think you deserved what happened to you, just for existing?

[junkyarddog]

No... [Ken seems kind of mystified where Garry is going with this.]

[artificialrose]

[Honestly, thank goodness. Ken has clearly had a... messed up childhood, to put it lightly. It doesn't seem as though he has any particular self loathing, just from the short encounters Garry has had with him, but, still. It's good to double check.]

Then... Similarly, the workers at the grocery stores don't deserve having things stolen from the store if it doesn't 100% need to be stolen, just because the store is there and has things out that you could steal. Because then they'll get in trouble from their bosses, and things like that, and then they'll end up being in the kind of situation where they're starving.

You didn't deserve to starve or be hurt just for existing... and most other people don't either. Does that make sense?

[junkyarddog]

[Ken frowns at this, looking down at the ground. Eventually, he speaks again.] Aren't you just saying the same thing as before, byon...? Whether people deserve it, whether it's wrong or not...that stuff doesn't matter, 'cause there'll always be people who don't care. All that matters is what people can do, and what they can't do. I can try to steal stuff, and they can try to stop me. Whoever's better at what they're trying to do wins.

[He lifts his head, fixing Garry with a look.] Besides, how many of 'em would care whether or not kids deserve to starve if they can't afford their food? You think they'd just let us take stuff if we could prove we needed it? Or would they not care?

[Ken isn't always as blatant about it as Chikusa is, but his childhood definitely left him no less jaded.]

[artificialrose]

[Garry at least has enough awareness in him to look sheepish.]

I was hoping that if I phrased it a different way, then it would make sense... [But clearly not.] I imagine a lot of people would care, if they saw something happening in plain view, especially if it were happening to a child. And even if not...

Ken, how do you think that kind of view changes?

[junkyarddog]

Nobody cared. [Ken says this without bitterness, purely as a matter-of-fact statement, and that's far more horrific than if he was angry about it. Ken says this from the perspective of someone who, while perhaps not as correct as they think, is still drawing on a lot of hard evidence.

He frowns at Garry's question.] That stuff doesn't change, byon. That's just how people are. Some people are different, like you or Hakkai-sama, but that's like... [He has to think for a few moments to find the word.] ...exceptions.

[artificialrose]

If we were really exceptions, and no one ever cares... Then we'd still be living in the dark ages, wouldn't we? With kings ruling over us and regular people never having a say in anything.

It's not perfect... and it can seem horribly slow sometimes. But things do change, Ken. [He reaches over, pauses, and then changes his course slightly to pat him on the shoulder.] And it doesn't happen that way by people only caring about themselves.

[junkyarddog]

[Ken looks faintly bemused by this.] We were the only ones being chased by hitmen, but...there's lots of people nobody cares about, byon. People just left to figure out how to live, or to die if they can't. Just 'cause there's no kings doesn't mean it's not still bad.

[Ken eyes Garry.] We never stole stuff from people who'd die 'cause they lost it. [Mostly because people that badly off didn't have anything worse stealing, admittedly.] But plenty of times we'd have died if we hadn't stolen stuff. So...I'm not gonna feel bad for stealing, 'cause it's always been a lot worse for us if we don't steal than it is for the people we steal from. [He pauses.] ...but if you don't want me to steal stuff, at least for this, then I won't. 'Cause I care about you, even if I don't care about them.

[Ken feels this is an intelligent and reasonable compromise. And, all things considered, it is. It's even a little flattering, in a weird way.]

[artificialrose]

Well... That's good.

[And, he supposes, the most he can ask for. Honestly, it's a good sign that Ken knew better than to steal from people in just as bad situations as he was himself. Clearly teaching him these kinds of morals will be hard, but...]

I think you're a good kid, Ken. [A teenager is still young enough to be called that, right...] Thanks for thinking of me.