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

[sing_for_me]

[ Before Alex can react to being several feet off the ground, they've already landed. When Maria moves forward, Alex steps back, not wanting to be in her way and to keep the kids back as well.

The ayakashi shakes off its landing, turning and hissing at Maria. It starts to pace from side to side, as if deciding how to attack her. Or maybe even waiting for her to move first. ]

[declamando]

[Maria's not going to wait for it to attack her with Alex and the kids still so close, and she takes its hesitation as a sign to act, running in before it can settle its decision.]

(Stand up) And this drenched
(Stand up) Heart that has become
(Stand up) Heavy...

[The ayakashi makes a hasty lunge, and Maria catches it, grappling for a moment before flipping it over onto its back with a thump that shakes the street a little.]

(Stand up) Sing the song of the warrior!

[Before it can recover, she leaps into the air, flips, and plunges down with her blade. The fact that this one is a shinki's vessel form becomes obvious when the impact creates a bright white flash, enveloping the ayakashi and disintegrating it.

Maria makes a gesture to Alex, keeping an eye on the other two ayakashi she stunned earlier.]

Head out while I finish off these two.

[sing_for_me]

W-what about you?

[ Maria was obviously capable on her own, but Alex still worried about her facing both of the giant ayakashi. She does understand that she needs to get the children out of there though..She hesitates for a moment. ]

I’ll come back!

[ And she starts to run as fast as she can. ]

[declamando]

[Maria gives her a reassuring, borderlining overconfident smile.] Don't worry about it. This is my job back home.

[The ayakashi have always reminded her to some degree of Noise, though the ayakashi are less immediately dangerous. It means she considers herself to have some experience with the matter of disposing of them efficiently, and she plans to do so as Alex goes.

One of the ayakashi from before is starting to struggle upright, but Maria charges it, pushing it back. By the time Alex gets back, the two ayakashi are mere particles in the night air...but Maria is holding a white-glowing hand to her chest, looking a little out of breath. She's starting to feel the Gear's recoil.]

[sing_for_me]

[ Alex goes as fast as those heels let her, but eventually she does manage to bring the kids to safety and make her way back to Maria. But as one would expect from the warrior, Maria's foes were no were to be seen. ]

Are..you alright?

[ Her eyes focus on the glow of her hand, wondering if that had any significance. ]

[declamando]

[Maria removes her hand as Alex approaches, and the glow fades off - while she doesn't look like she's too strained now, there is still something a little tight about her expression. Still, she nods in answer to Alex's question, with a fleeting smile coming after.]

For the moment. Let's get some more of the victims out while the ayakashi in this area are down.

[And while she can still use her Gear without risking major internal damage by forcing it.]

[sing_for_me]

[ The concern didn't go away, but Alex figured the sooner they finished, the sooner Maria could rest and recover. ]

Understood.

[ Alex will provide any support she can, calming down any ayakashi they bump into if she's able to. They take several trips back and forth, getting as many people as they can out of the danger zone. ]

Any..idea what that thing is? [ She gestures to the dark mass above them. It clearly had something to do with all of this.

[declamando]

[Maria glances up, looking a bit concerned.] I'm not really sure it's a "thing"...I think it might be what's affecting the area, though. Maybe the effect of a spell or something. I'm not really as experienced in this sort of thing as a lot of the others here.

[She seems a little hesitant to admit that, but it's not really the same kind of magic as what she ends up having to deal with back home. That's usually founded in alchemy, and a lot more destructive than this sort of thing.]