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]

I'm honest whether I'm insulting anyone or not.... It's hardly my fault people can't handle that...

[smilingbullet]

I figured. Are you honest if you think someone should be praised too? Or are you that thing, uh, tsundere?

[ He does not entirely know what 'tsundere' entails, but he is at least partly familiar with the term. ]

[kokuyoyo]

....What?

[D2, no, stop. Stop.]

[smilingbullet]

I heard that's a thing people can be! Are you one?

[ Sorry what was that? ]

[kokuyoyo]

...I have no idea what you're talking about.

[smilingbullet]

Huh? No idea at all? Isn't it teenage slang?

[ And Chikusa is a teenager, right? ]

[kokuyoyo]

[He's a dead teenager, who mostly dwells in the afterlife, and technically from Italy. There's just more blank staring.]

...Is it?

[smilingbullet]

[ But unlike D2, he's actually lived in Japan before, and as a teenager. ]

I thought it was..? I heard teenagers use it a couple times in the Near Shore, and no adults, so that's what I figured.

[kokuyoyo]

[In an abandoned building away from civilization, D2. He barely qualifies.]


....I... don't really spend time with teenagers like that....

[...Okay, now he has to pull out his phone.]

[smilingbullet]

[ Ssh, he fake-went to school there, it qualifies a little. ]

Ah, is it a specific category of teens that use it?

[ why your phone in the middle of a conversation chikusa. children have no manners these days, always stuck with their nose in their phones. (wow it's like d2's an old person.) ]

[kokuyoyo]

[Jokes on you, D2, he never had any manners from the fetus onwards.]

I don't know.... so that's why I'm looking it up...

[Give him a minute.... aaaaand squint.]

....I am not tsun.

[smilingbullet]

[ He could have guessed that.

D2 moves over to peer at the phone as well. ]

...you mean you're not dere.

[kokuyoyo]

[...]

I live with someone who's tsun. I'm not tsun.

[smilingbullet]

Nah you're a little tsun.

[ Maybe he should research other types of people though? Is there other kinds beyond tsundere? ]

[kokuyoyo]

No. I'm...

[See, now he has to google more on this, fuck you, buddy]

...Kuudere. That.

[smilingbullet]

Kuudere? What's the Kuu stand for?

[ He knows a couple meanings of the word, but if any of them are right.... Let him see? ]

[kokuyoyo]

[Give him a second...]

...'Cool'. As in... cold.

[smilingbullet]

Hmm... So that's even more of the hot and cold thing. That does seem a bit more like it works some.

[kokuyoyo]

...you can read it for yourself if you're not convinced...

[smilingbullet]

Okay. Can I have a closer look at your phone? I'm not the best at the reading-a-tiny-screen-over-a-shoulder thing. I guess it's an above-teenager thing.

[kokuyoyo]

[Wordlessly, Chikusa just kind of... tilts it in his general direction and slowly shoves it a little closer to his face. That's helping, right-]

[smilingbullet]

[ Totally helping, totally helping. D2 tilts his head enough to make the angle Chikusa has given him to work with, well, work. ]

Hmmmmhmhmhmmmm, much more subdued hot and cold, then.

[kokuyoyo]

....So are you saying it doesn't match....

[smilingbullet]

No, that's not what I'm saying.

[kokuyoyo]

....Then.... It fits.

[He guesses?]