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

[priforprince]

[ --- that works. What's more, it pins those appendages, limiting their movement! What a useful turn of events.

The valiant warrior knows a cue when they see one, leaping over those trapped tentacles and drawing an antique fencing foil, with which it stabs down on one of the ayakashi's many eyes. ] I will - protect!

[ There is a screeching noise as the blade hits home. ] Now, I'll have you retreat!

[ Ideally, one supposes, the ayakashi is supposed to retreat without taking the scythe with it. That is not quite being taken into consideration with this heroic monologue. Sorry. ]

[toremainbehind]

[He chuckles.]

File a complaint to the ruler of the heavens. People do often find jobs on their own to earn their own income.

[revolutionfalcon]

That's not an excuse. [That's the last thing that should be getting used as an excuse, really, because not knowing how he felt seems to Shun like something that also should have been talked out with someone. Which is exactly what didn't happen here.] If you don't know, then you reach out.

[He could go on, but at that point, he sees movement at Lavi's neck, and his eyes flick down. He's only seen someone blight out of guilt once before, and it was much worse that time, but it's enough that he knows that those black spots mean.

His eyes widen slightly before he narrows them, looking back up to Lavi's face.]

Talk it out with your god. You're starting to blight. [And he knows Lavi wouldn't want to hurt her, which is exactly what's going to happen if he leaves that situation be. He didn't mean for that to be the result of this conversation - but he doesn't regret anything he said, and he's not going to take it back insincerely. Lavi will have to figure it out now.]

And if that doesn't solve it, contact me. [He says that in a manner that doesn't leave space for argument. Lavi is a friend, so he's getting helped whether he wants it or not. It's just a question of whether he's going to make it easy or hard for Shun.]

[priforprince]

[ Taking that as a compliment, Hibiki smiles behind her cup and takes a bigger sip.

She clears her throat when she lowers her cup. She'd rather move away from talking about Shun, and to do that, she is willing to talk about something other than herself once. You, for instance. ] You've been scarce.

[ Don't think she hasn't noticed. It. Might be nice of her to note your absence? Maybe? ]

[priforprince]

Impossible--

[ You found it and she didn't?

When Dust's hand closes over the doll, a splash of hot water drips onto his fingers. Don't make this easy on her! ]

[unlucky7]

[Even with the limp, the natural design of the leopard's body is meant to move efficiently. Ginia adjusts her gait and keeps pace with him, large paws pushing off asphalt with each stride. Her ears swivel toward him as he talks, a small huff of air and brief nod an indication she's listening to his directions.

Ginia doesn't recognize him--at least, she's pretty sure she doesn't. All the same, she's thankful for his assistance. The people around here are kind; it's nice.]

[drops_acid]

Oh...

[A small sigh of relief.]

Oh.

[Followed by the realization that she's spent all this time just making all these wild assumptions and practicing speeches and fretting about absolutely nothing.

Now the heat rises to her cheeks as she realizes that she just made a fool of herself for basically no reason.]

Oh my goodness I am so sorry! I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions like that.

[water_meebo]

[ Of course, she would teleport away from this. He stumbled forward as he throws off some of the ayakashi anyway since it was already a danger to the innocent human beings. ]

...Even so, you shouldn't be so reckless. Someone could have gotten caught in that.

[ Okay that laughter--- it definitely was familiar. He just ignored how antagonistic it sounded right now. Yes, because now there are more coming for them. ]

o/

[water_meebo]

[ Mikleo was so concentrated that Lavi's presence surprised him momentarily. ]

I am not--- thinking too hard.

[ He sounded a bit defensive but hi, Lavi. He misses seeing you around. ]

[unlucky7]

[Ammy, a nice name. The goddess is right to hide her identity; Ginia would be mortified to know she was speaking so casually with Amaterasu herself. So it's better this way.]

How did you begin learning knot-tying?

[water_meebo]

[ Mikleo was usually very perceptive when it came to noticing things. Sometimes it doesn't work well for the people he knows.

He relaxed some as Tatara said he was fine, though still one more look before nodding his head ]

Alright.

[ a pause. ]

I see. There's always a lot of unexpected stuff that happens in this place, huh?

[ He read somewhere that people tend to have more interest in individuals who are like that but he can't say that he fully believes it because Tatara is right-- who would really? In any case he wasn't one to judge ]

[revolutionfalcon]

[Assuming Ginia can probably answer that question herself through the mental link, Shun slides off the leopard's back once Caster comes over to check her injuries. At least he's prompt about coming to the aid of his shinki, which is more than Shun can say for some gods here.

He can't hear Ginia's request himself, but he does leave a lapse in the conversation for her to fill with an answer before he says anything to Caster.]

She got cornered in an alley. I came to help, but there were enough of them that she still had to fight with me.

[It's a little annoying that he hadn't been able to protect her more, but better just injured than overwhelmed because only one of them was fighting.]

[trademark_skull]

A-a little... It's still nervous to do!

[Especially getting the knot right. Will it bring bad luck if it doesn't look fancy?]

But if I do more...it should get better.

[trademark_skull]

It...it should. [Things always go faster with more people. Unless they really suck at it.]

But, I'm not very good at it yet.

And gods do this kind of thing often? [Maybe he ain't cut out for this.]

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, there kinda does, because if you're obsessively dedicating yourself to someone like that for no reason then there's something really wrong there, my dude.

[The ayakashi is starting to attempt to circle, apparently trying to figure out which shinki to go after first if it manages to get itself upright.]

[trademark_skull]

...At all? I'm pretty sure every world has something like that.

[hellskitchen]

Extra security makes sense since who knows where they will strike next. Still think it's crazy how someone tried to burn down Amaterasu's temple with her inside.

[ Rin's aware that something is going on behind the scenes, but it's never directly affected him. Even when he hears things like this, it's either already has transpired, or it's not within his power to do anything about. It's one thing to be on guard, but he's not sure what he would be able to do in such a situation.

Though, he didn't really want to go into it. Especially since he hasn't seen Davesprite in a while.]

Just another one of those unsolved mysteries of the Far Shore. Check back next week for further developments.

[hellskitchen]

I can see how people can take offense to that, but I guess he can take into consideration of being more sensitive.

[Not sure, if Add is capable of allowing himself to show vulnerability in that way. Especially in front of such a large group of people, but it's something he can work on.

As for surrounding himself with reliable people, Rin agrees.]

I suggested to him, to find people to help him, and to not attempt anything on his own. With the incident, he did bring two other people with him, but I dunno if he expected us to get inside of the core. Or even for it to take control of him. There wasn't much I could do as his shinki, but now that I know what's he's capable of, I'll keep my eye on him too.

[revolutionfalcon]

Whether there'd been any major incidents in the Heavens just before we started arriving. The only one she knew about was the thing with Ebisu.

[Since that had seemed to be a shock to a lot of gods and shinki. Bishamon had told Shun about it first, but it's come up with several other old gods since then.]

[revolutionfalcon]

["More sensitive" probably isn't how Shun would put it, but that's more of a problem of semantics, so he just shrugs before moving on to the main topic at hand here.]

That sounds like he didn't fully know what he was dealing with, so he shouldn't have done it in the first place in that case. [Especially with something that seems to be as dangerous as that void core is to existence in its vicinity. Taking people with him is one thing, but having no idea of what they might all end up dealing with is another.]

I know he's gotten a few more shinki recently as well, so it shouldn't just be you. [Though he's less sure of how useful Ain is going to be to that end, even if the other guy he met seems relatively serious.]

[replicatedform]

That's what I'm thinking but...

[He looks at D2, and then at his plaque.]

... Is it cheating if both side agrees to it?

[revolutionfalcon]

[That question makes Shun blink slightly in apparent surprise before he frowns. He doesn't like accepting help at the best of times, but it seems odd to him he'd be observed as tired right now...unless Ain's reading his wariness as that, which is entirely possible.]

No. I'm used to this sort of thing. [He sounds certain of himself, and he looks back at Ain with no hint of trying to hide anything from him - there's a certain shadow under Shun's eyes, but that's always there, even outside of battle. There are some kinds of "tired" that aren't just about sleep or energy.

Kotori is a different matter, but she seems to have noticed the pass over her as well, and she murmurs to Shun through their link that she's fine, even if she suggests not going after any big packs again for a few minutes.]

Why do you want to know? [Unlike some of the other times with Ain, this isn't so much trying to gauge his intention - though he also wouldn't say it's not that at all - as trying to figure out what he saw that prompted him to ask the question.]

[replicatedform]

[Once he received the person and lift them onto his back, basically giving them a piggyback, he looks at Kanade for the signal.

There!

Without a word, Yamanbagiri starts running. The victim's weight makes him a little slower than usual, but he's fit and strong enough to carry them like this. He's trusting Kanade to cover for him.

The ayakashi starts to scramble back into their feet, or their equivalent limbs, and starts to go after them.]

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, that sure was a thing. Happened a while ago, but it's still suspicious as fuck they picked the day all the new gods were out of the Heavens.

[Davesprite's smelling a rat there, though he also wonders whether it might've also been something to do with the placement of blame. If they'd all been in Tokyo helping out with something like they so often are, it would've been easier to clear all the new gods' names through alibi than when they're spread across the world.

Still, he hasn't really been getting too deeply into that sort of thing here, so he rolls with Rin's changing of the topic.]

Yeah, as long as there are any further developments and not just Cleaning the Heavens 3: This Time It's Personal.

[declamando]

[That makes Maria smile slightly in amusement.] Not all the time I'm wearing it, as you can see, but I do need to do it most of the time. It's how I synchronise with it, so if I try to attack and I don't have that synchronisation, it's more likely it'll fail or damage me instead.

[Granted, it's going to damage her instead eventually anyway, but at least she can prolong it by singing as necessary.]