27 - The Gods' Meeting

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: The Meeting of the Gods is here at last.
When: October 30
Where: Heaven's Meeting Hall
Summary:







Pre-Meeting

Guards at the front door are carefully checking each god who enters off on their list of attendees, and taking the names of each of their shinki attendants.

Once the participants are past the doors, they are guided down the hallway to a huge meeting room by one of the guards, who will announce them by divine title, and each of their shinki by whatever name they gave. It's an open question as to who's actually listening, though, because the room is swiftly filling up with gods and shinki. As well as the newcomers, old gods are here, some in human form attended by their uniformed shinki, others in stranger shapes -- giant bears, round-bellied tanuki, turtles, dragons, and more. There's even one tricolored tabby cat in a small blue cap, seated majestically in the arms of a uniformed shinki and chatting with another god.

Buffet tables bearing every kind of food and drink imaginable are set up at one end of the room, and a dais with a podium is at the other, draped in bright gold and white bunting and emblazoned with a chrysanthemum emblem.

Early Announcements

Finally, the socialization comes to an end, and the meeting itself begins as Ookuninushi grabs the microphone and steps up to the podium. The year's most popular gods are named first: Hotei, one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, is in third place, Tenjin in second and Ebisu in first place. Each steps up to bow and accept their accolades in turn: Hotei is a big man with a wide smile, Tenjin a tall, ascetic man wearing old robes and concealing his smug expression behind a fan, and a tired-looking younger man in a business suit announces himself as representing Ebisu, who is watching over the Near Shore during the event.

Next, the most popular new god is announced: Ookuninushi has to stop and wrinkle his nose at the name for several seconds before he pronounces it-- Nekhbet, a new arrival in the Heavens.

He moves on to call for a moment of silence recognizing the difficulties of the last year. Many gods have faced reincarnation and returned wearing unfamiliar faces! The Heavens can't yet explain the cause of these changes, but Amaterasu herself urges them to welcome their friends' new incarnations as brothers and sisters in the Heavens.

His final announcement is that, after the successful resolution of the trouble associated with some recent deaths, Orihime has been restored to her place among the eight million gods.

Fortune Weaving

Announcements finished, the main activity of the evening begins. The white-robed shinki bring in huge baskets filled with wooden prayer plaques, setting them down all around the room, and the gods begin to form into circles around each basket. The older gods will gladly explain to any confused newcomers that they're weaving fortunate connections between mortal lives as they spread the plaques out and tie strings off together with great care. All the plaques have names written on them; some are filled out with prayers, some just with notes, and others adorned with pictures of flowers, animals or favorite characters.

Gods and shinki are given blank plaques to inscribe with their own names, too, in order to give them the chance to make fortunate connections as well. (Not necessarily romantic, the other gods will assure them! There are many different kinds of fated connection.)

Help out, take the opportunity to chat, and make some fortunate matches for yourself as well as these hard-working petitioners.

Midnight Disaster

Just shy of midnight, while the gods are still matching up plaques, finishing the last of the banquet, and getting into drunken arguments over who to connect to whom, a shinki in a dark suit torn at the shoulder comes dashing into the Meeting Hall.

"Calamity!" he cries-- and tells the assembled Heavens that a mysterious blight has fallen across a sleepy residential community in the Tokyo suburbs. The blight, a huge circle covering about two blocks, is sucking the life out of everything inside it: plants are wilting, and people and animals have fallen into deathly slumber. As if that weren't bad enough, it's also attracting big, dangerous ayakashi. Ebisu and his shinki are there now, but there aren't enough of them to fight the ayakashi and move the people trapped inside the blighted circle to a safer place before they die.

Volunteers will need to fight ayakashi and rescue the mortals trapped in the blight -- once they're outside its edge, they'll begin to wake up and recover on their own.

In Summary:

• Enjoy the banquet before the announcements
• Hear about the most popular gods
• Help make fortunate connections for the living
• Respond to a disaster
• Have fun~

Comments

[kokuyoyo]

[Touch his hat and lose a hand, Ren, which will mean Shun will want to murder him and it will be a big thing and everyone will lose.]

[Chikusa blinks, somehow not having expected the completely normal reaction.]

....Birthday gift.

[He says the words like a foreign language.]

[all_seeing_eye]

No good, huh?

[LET HER LOVE YOUUUUU]

I guess I should introduce myself first, right? I'm Futaba. Or Yog-Sothoth, to countless basement dwelling otaku and one or two creepy cults in the northeastern United States.

[Smiling, and utterly undeterred, she extends a hand again. Not for face squishes, but in the Fist of Friendship. C'mon, Tama. Bump it.]

[all_seeing_eye]

So does this stuff really work?

[She's just sort of picking up random pieces of thread now to inspect them.]

[clothes_make_the_man]

How common is the practice of dark magic at home, incidentally?

[clothes_make_the_man]

Oh! Good catch.

[Forrest laughs a little.]

You're right, though. It all looks so good, I'm not sure where to start.

[Nodding, he smiles.]

I've been doing well. Things have been relatively quiet lately, so I've had a chance to really work on some new designs.

[all_seeing_eye]

[Frooooowwwwn.]

Won't that break up relationships and turn friends against each other?

Re: midnight

[all_seeing_eye]

No no no no...

[She's just repeating it to herself until she notices that the world is suddenly darker and quieter. Like her room. A safe place. And slowly, she comes out of her panic and is overtaken instead with curiosity.]

...Huh? What... what happened?

[ammyterasu]

She worked hard for her whole life!

[Why would he denigrate the hard work of a cat?! How cruel.

She reaches up, going onto her tiptoes, to prod Shun in the middle of the chest with one outstretched finger.]

Nekhbet, not everything you don't understand is wrong.

[all_seeing_eye]

There's too much...

[At least she seems to recognize that Saori is there, and doesn't flinch away from her hand.]

[ammyterasu]

[She smiles at him, and then catches a glimpse, over his shoulder, of a couple of white-robed shinki heading purposefully in her direction.

Oh no, they've spotted her!]

Please continue to try hard, Trunks!

[And with one last quick smile, she turns to hurry away to another group.]

[ammyterasu]

But you were looking for him! Why is it troublesome for you?

[With more than one person looking, Chikusa will find his partner that much more quickly, and what's wrong with that?]

[ammyterasu]

The ones that my shinki gave me.

[kokuyoyo]

....Some things... are meant for just one person...

[let him be Gay in peace]

[nopixiedust]

Did they tell you about what us new gods and shinki were doing?

[all_seeing_eye]

I'm glad you asked!

[Futaba whirls around, pushing up her glasses.]

Tama was born near Kishi Station on the Kishigawa Line and raised with a group of stray cats that used to live near the station. They would all hang out near the station and get treats from the passengers.

[She's definitely happy to get to explain all of this.]

At one point, the station was nearly forced to close because of financial problems. Around the same time, the station master had more or less adopted Tama. There was a bit of an uproar from the citizens who didn't want the station to close, so they kept it open and named the cat as station master as kind of a promotional thing. Her primary duty was to greet passengers, and she was paid in food and treats instead of an actual salary. Everybody loved it.

[Her smile grows even more.]

There was an almost 20% increase in the number of passengers riding the line after Tama's promotion, and it's estimated all the publicity surrounding her contributed over a billion yen to the local economy. She even got her own private office eventually, and became the first cat to become executive of a railroad corporation. And after she died a few years ago, she had a traditional burial at the station, was given the title 'Honorary Eternal Stationmaster,' and enshrined at a local Shinto shrine as the cat goddess Tama Daimyoujin. She was succeeded by her apprentice Nitama, who still holds the position.

[all_seeing_eye]

Not really a big fan of ceremony, huh?

[She casually folds her arms behind her head, tapping her shoe against the floor.]

...Yeah, me either.

[priforprince]

....That's true. They don't know what they're missing.

[ The people of this puniverse haven't had enough opportunities to witness the splendor of PriPara for themselves, so they don't realize what sad, dreary lives they lead. Hibiki can change that.

Having now successfully explained away this unpleasantry, Hibiki both calms down and returns to the planet. ] Give your god my compliments.

[ Whatever her flaws, she does recognize ability. ]

[all_seeing_eye]

I know. You're pretty easy to read.

[SEE WHAT SHE DID THERE]

[priforprince]

They accompanied me.

[ That was what you were asking, and you know it.

Here. These three...balance each other out. She will position them in a circle. ]

[fauxcalibur]

Oh? What else guides our way?

[He has his own opinions, of course, but he's occasionally willing to listen to someone else's. It's not always the safest of conversations, but since when has he worried about what is and isn't safe?]

MD

[shutupnail]

[The issued order caught Piccolo's attention even from afar. He glanced back to see who gave it and caught sight of the old god. There was something about them that easily gave them away as from this world. Piccolo gave pause for a moment and it was enough time for the old god to notice him and issue his bit of help.

Piccolo scowled at the tip. As if he didn't already know that!

Resisting the urge to growl, though, he glanced away from Raijin even as he responded.]

I didn't come here to be a damn ferry. I came here for the fight!

[Despite his words, Piccolo reluctantly picked up the nearest prone human and casually tossed it back towards the safe zone. It was, uh, probably not the best way to move an unconscious person but it seemed effortless and was definitely quick... right?]

[ammyterasu]

If I don't think it's insulting, then it isn't.

[Koten, still bristling, shakes his head. "You're the Queen of Heaven, and they've been gods a year and they treat you like a child--"]

-- I'm not a child!

If I have a problem, I'll say so. I don't need you to argue with me.

[Reluctantly, he bows to her, though he's still scowling a little.]

[ammyterasu]

Oh! What a useful word.

[Because flower decorations are her signature, besides being beautiful all on their own, of course. She beams at Hibiki, and tries again.]

"Furage."

[ammyterasu]

Oh, I thought you meant you were going to improve the wards here....

[Which, if he knew how to do that, would mean he didn't have very much to learn about the security.]

If you'd like to learn them instead, then yes, you should talk to my shinki.

[priforprince]

I recognize no shinki but Wendy.

[ In that role, anyway. That the rest of you do that for other people is....well, she supposes it happens. ]