thenearshore | 007 | Clean Up Your Act

Entry tags:

007 | Clean Up Your Act

Who: Everyone!
What: Spring cleaning
When: All day April 15
Where: All around the Heavens
Summary: The Heavens don't like things being cluttered, so it's time to clean up a little bit.

Main Hall

While the main hall of the Heavens seems spotlessly clean at all times, that's not the case at all. In fact, it's been at least a decade since the last time they actually cleaned everything out properly. There are a lot of hidden closets and back rooms that have layers of dust and dozens of boxes filled with nothing but junk. Who knows, though! You might find something interesting and useful in there along with all the garbage.

Suprises

Unfortunately, some of the older temples on the Far Shore seem to have some interesting surprises tucked away, ranging from cursed artifacts all the way to magical creatures locked up in long-forgotten rooms. You are free to be creative with this as a way to get your characters into trouble while cleaning.

Complimentary Dinner

After all of your hard work, you deserve to have some tasty food and refreshing beverages. So the Heavens have provided that for you, so that you can wind down after a long day. It's not as fancy as the banquets they often put on, but there is a nice array of food and drinks for everyone to enjoy.

Counselling

As usual, there is a white-robed shinki bearing the gold chrysanthemum of Amaterasu sitting at a table in the Main Hall. There is a small sign that denotes her as the counselling shinki. Anyone is welcome to approach her, and she will smile serenely at anyone passing by as well.

In Summary:

Clean up your home
Help clean others' homes
Get the main hall clean too!
Hope no hidden magic jumps out
Seek counselling if you need it
Enjoy your complimentary dinner
Have fun~

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[That just makes Shun even more sure this is something he's adjusted to living in the temple, though he does tip his head slightly at that bit of information. His own temple is earthen and linen, decked with vultures and clearly a monument to the god he's meant to be representing and nothing else. The idea of a temple that's adjusted to its owner seems just a little strange to him.]

So it modeled itself after you instead of the god you're supposed to be? Though in a place this changeable, I doubt that would take much effort. [He probably just had to think about it the right way and it switched things up for him. Meanwhile, he's not even sure he'd bother changing his own temple if he could.]

That sounds like far more effort than anyone really needs to put into a home, anyway. As long as it's safe, it doesn't really matter what it looks like.

[Or in this case, relatively safe. He still does not at all trust the Heavens.]

It's Fortuna. [Ankh shrugged slightly, poking at a pillow with his Greeed hand and extracting a strange red feather that glinted in the light, the tiny edges of it curled and the vague suggestion of an eye pattern at the tip.] I doubt that there ever was a real temple to her unless you want to count a gambling hall.

[Let's face it - the Lady of Fate was prone to being everything and nothing, good and bad, right and wrong. For every person that wished for chance to give them that one big break, there were more that just suddenly fell over it. There was no way that a god like that would play favorites, even if it was for themselves.]

I haven't noticed any effort at all on my part. [He concentrated and the feather was engulfed in flames, but instead of turning to ash, it just burned like a candle or a light bulb.] So it might be just a cause of whatever force is at work.

[That seems logical enough to Shun, and if he recalls correctly, Fortuna isn't exactly a modern god. If there ever was a temple to her, it's probably long gone and not really something to compare to.]

Hmph. It's not as if there isn't enough of those around to call her domain, anyway.

[Seedy gambling pits have their uses, especially when it comes to gathering information and making connections, but he doesn't exactly enjoy the kinds of clientele they attract. Too many pointless fights that he could win with both hands tied behind his back.

The pattern of the feather is a noticeable one - not one he can say he's ever seen before, but when it sets alight, the image makes him think of some kind of phoenix. It burns much more effectively than a feather should, he can tell that much.]

Random chance having that kind of power is hardly surprising. [His eyes are still on the feather.] What kind of bird is that from?

They're desperate places in any case. The amount of greed in them makes me less incline to actually use any for a model.

[While he was attracted to wants and needs, Ankh found those people who obsessed over gambling were not worth the effort to use them for Yummy hosts. It was the other people that gained more Medals - the people who had a deeper connection to their desires then not.

He turned the feather a little, frowning as he studied it and then pinched it between his fingers and drew them up along its length. The flames went out and the feather showed no signs of it ever being lit in the first place. At Shun's question, he raised his eyebrows and shrugged, sticking the feather into a random vase at his elbow.]

Mine.

They're useful for information in a pinch, but that's about it.

[It's not like he hasn't made that kind of use of them himself in his time, but it's more trouble than it's worth a lot of the time, and if he can find information by himself, so much the better. He hates the idea of giving up at the best of times, so being surrounded by people in that state isn't enjoyable.

Still watching as the flame goes out, Shun raises an eyebrow slightly at that answer to the question. He's adjusting fairly well to the general level of weirdness in this place, but he can't help but look Ankh up and down once more before replying somewhat dryly.]

You don't look like any sort of bird I'm familiar with. [He's mostly familiar with birds of prey and nightingales, but still.]

I can get my information through other methods.

[Even if it was to blindly trip over it in the day-to-day bustle of living around too many humans who have too much desire. Let Uva use the gambling halls to get his Cell Medals. He'll stick with collecting them through the use of OOO.

Even if neither one of them really were part of that world any more.

The vase dissolved into a pile of silver-dollar sized coins and then shifted to the form of a dish, the feather gently falling over to rest in the dish. Ankh poked at it for a moment and then snorted, hopping down from that perch to start picking up pillows again and putting them into piles.]

Not surprising; there's only one of me.

So can I, normally. It's the kind of place you go as a last resort.

[Even if he generally keeps to the shadows and picks up information for a while when coming to a new dimension, Synchro was the only one he'd really been forced to go into the underworld of. The society there being so impossibly screwed-up made it hard to just step in unnoticed otherwise.

The movement of the feather catches his eye again, the grace of the movement interesting for something subject to such radical chance. Before long, though, his eyes are back on Ankh - the new information is changing his perception a bit, and he's looking over his motions as if curious as to whether there's anything unusual or inhuman about them.]

I meant I've never met a bird that could turn into a human, though I suppose with someone here claiming humans and birds went to war in their world I shouldn't be that surprised.

[While he was very humanoid even in his natural state, Ankh was built from the essence of birds. He moved in sharp, quick darts, putting his weight on one foot at a time and his head leading the way in some motions, while at other times he would tilt his head in order to look at something with one eye before facing it head on. Right now, he was giving the pile of pillows the kind of look that would normally result in something getting set on fire, but he knew how futile that would be in this place. Deciding that its placement was good enough for now, he huffed and gave his hair a quick toss before turning to stare at Shun.

That was something new, but he should expect something to happen. Not all birds were stupid and fighting humans would be a logic conclusion only if to stop them from being gross. Still, the guy was really watching him.]

I can assume a lot of different shapes. [There is a shifting sound of metal against metal as Ankh's form blurred, growing taller and heavier until he was a strange humanoid bird creature with large, shimmering wings. His voice changed as well, gaining a strange metallic quality to it.] It attracts less attention then my natural form, wouldn't you say?

[The idiosyncrasies in motion are noted by Shun - probably not something particularly useful, but in this case they're a point of interest. His suspension of disbelief is dead enough at this point that just informing himself on the variety of creatures and worlds represented in this place is starting to become good enough for him.

It goes to show how much he's gone through that the radical change in form and voice only makes him shift slightly in an instinctive motion to be ready for any potential threat, and his eyes narrow a little as he takes in the new shape. It's unusual, definitely, and it now makes a lot more sense why he'd want to stay as human in shape, at least.]

Good point. That form looks like it'd be useful in brute-force battles, but you're right about something that unique drawing a hell of a lot of unwanted attention.

[While it might not be the question most people would ask, Shun finds himself a bit curious about another aspect of the combat applications, and it only takes him a moment to decide to voice it.] Does it take you long to adjust to the changes in size and weight? It's hard to tell whether shifting during a fight would be that practical if you need time to get used to changed range and reach.

Of course. [Another shifting and blurring before Ankh was back in his more human persona, a few red feathers falling around him. He watched them for a moment and then picked them up, depositing them in the dish with the first feather. He knew that later on they would either turn into a lamp like the ones hanging in the backyard or end up in a pillow.] Us Greeed were made in the time of knights so our forms are built similar to that of a man in plate mail.

[Which wasn't as clumsy as some people would believe. A properly fitted suit of plate was perfectly balanced so that a person can move almost as well as they could without the plate. It was only in later generations that it was considered cumbersome. Even then, he was still lighter then people would think so he could fly like the birds he was based off of.]

Think of it more like the transformation and redistribution of matter then a shift in biological structure. I don't feel any differences and any residue imbalance doesn't last any amount of time to hamper me in a fight.

[Nothing in the conversation so far had prompted Shun's memory regarding this guy, but the mention of being made in the time of knights is strange enough that his mind automatically tries to find something to compare it to. It's only then that he remembers the brief network conversation from about a week prior, and the name it had been tagged with that he'd managed to skim over at the time enough that it took all that to remember it.]

...I almost forgot I spoke to you before. You're supposed to be something like eight hundred years old, aren't you?

[He certainly doesn't look it, but he doubts most of the gods here look their age, so why should constructed beings be any different?]

Then it's a formidable power. That kind of flexibility in battle would throw even experienced fighters.

That is what I've said.

[He clicked his tongue, eyes rolling in disbelief that people just don't believe him when he tells the absolute truth about something. Was there something about him that made people think that he could say anything truthfully? There was no point in fully lying to people. After all, lying only just got a person into too much trouble.

He was going to have to find a very large bag or maybe just get a net so he could carry all these pillows out of the building. Then he was going to have to get help with distributing them around the human world. So that meant he just need to wait until Eiji came home. Giving up on chasing pillows around for the moment, he hopped onto a table and got comfortable.]

We were created for controlling an empire so I suppose that was the purpose in mind.

[Though Shun would probably be reacting with the same kind of frustration if he was in that position, his comment on it is a shade dry.]

I'm guessing I'm not the first person who hasn't taken that at face value, but I'm still learning the ropes of this place. Where I came from, gods weren't real and the dead stayed that way, and we didn't have anything that could live to the kind of age you are.

[It's a blunt statement and not intended as an excuse, merely an explanation. In any case, it's been more and more impossible to hold on to any sense of disbelief the longer he's been here.

Though Shun's lip curls a little at the idea of being created for something like that, he keeps his tone neutral, if a bit more curt than he's been up to this point.]

I can't imagine being made for that kind of purpose, though obviously it's hardly something you could keep doing in a place like this.

No, you're not. At least you aren't being stupid about it.

[He was an inhuman creature made from alchemy and birds. He did not understand a lot of things that humans took for granted, mainly because they were never that important for him. Sure, he did learn and evolved to better understand, but that did not mean he was going to find it all important to know.

Knowledge was only important when it effected him directly or the lives of those he considered his.]

Each world has its own rules, I suppose.

[Ankh snorted at that last bit, upper lip curling back though he privately agreed that it was the stupidest move on top of all other moves to make something like the Greeed. But, well, that would also mean that he would have never gain a consciousness and form but that didn't matter.]

Human greed is the driving point for a lot of things, good or bad; my existence is a part of that greed. However, we were not what that king had expected us to be. After all, we had our own wills and prides to contend with.

When the proof is standing in front of you, it's hard to be difficult about it. And there's enough stupid in the world already.

[He has no doubt that there's people here who'd refuse to believe something like that even when faced with physical evidence, but it's not the hardest thing he's had to accept. Might as well just keep it in mind and move on.

Ankh's comment on his own existence, though, isn't quite what Shun was expecting, and his eyes narrow a little as if he's trying to figure out how to read it. While he can't help but doubt something made from greed could distance themselves from it that much, this guy clearly isn't impressed with that as the source of his existence.]

So what did you do, then? [Whatever it was, he assumes they turned on the king at some point, but where they went from there is another question entirely.]

There are people who will deny such proof no matter what I would do to them.

[He says it in an off-handed manner, as if it really didn't matter. And it didn't, not really. Ankh had dealt with those people like he dealt with everything else - ignore unless they got in his way. It served him well considering.

Closing his Greeed hand, he concentrated and opened it. Sitting on the palm of his hand was a red Core Medal about the size of the silver ones making up the objects around them. He held it up to the light and it glowed from the inside, the stylized hawk design looking as if it was screaming in defiance.]

We fought. The king was too strong and he took our powers into himself but since greed consumed him too much, he became our tomb instead. So we slept until the seal on the tomb was broken.

[He flipped the Medal into the air and caught it, absorbing it back into his body.]

Idiots, then. If they can't believe something like that in a place like this, they're not going to last long.

[His tone is of a similar dismissiveness to Ankh's on that subject. It's a fact of life that if you can't adapt to new things and change your perspective, you're going to become obsolete one way or another. In peace, it just means getting left behind, but in war it means a quick death, and that's what he's much more familiar with by this point.

The medal draws his focus for a moment, the stylised bird still a much more familiar one to him than the form Ankh had taken. It doesn't sound like it had been an easy fight, but as long as they were the survivors in the end, that's some kind of positive out of it, if they're at least better than that king was.]

How long did that take? [With someone who's been around for 800 years, there could be a lot of answers to that.]

Humanity is like that.

[Evolving or not, humans always seem to be a little stupid about things that did not fit into their world views. It would be so amusing to him if it didn't also cause a lot of headaches from time to time. He shouldn't even care about it, but he had time to understand and learn.

It also helped that the cop he had to possess ended up teaching him a few little things of human behavior that Ankh would have never gotten through observing.]

It's only been two years since we were freed. [It had been a crazy time, and there were moments that he wondered about whether he would ever see the other Greeed again. As much as they had been so stupid, they were still like him.]

Not all of them. But more than we like to admit, yes.

[Obviously being human himself and having lived through a war, something which forces people to adapt or die (or adapt and die anyway, in some cases), Shun does feel the need to point out it's not always the case. Still, he can certainly relate well enough to the general point, since his attitude on stupid people isn't much different.

With eight hundred years of life and only having been freed for two since being sealed, though, something seems to strike an unpleasant chord with Shun. It's harder to pick up than it might be on most, but a trace of visible discomfort comes into his expression, his jaw clenching and his generally intense focus slipping for a moment.]

...Nobody should have to be imprisoned for that long. [He knows, logically, that it's nothing like what happens in his own world, but his mind can't help but ask what if, running with the thought of his own sealed and as-good-as-dead comrades trapped for that kind of time.]

[Ankh wasn't going to argue the point. While he did know that humans weren't all like that, he still had that piece that insisted that all humans were just piles of greed. Being reduced to human for a majority of his free year had really changed him. It really had changed him and he still was unsure if he liked the change.]

No one was stupid enough to free us. [The look on his face wasn't pleasant. It's was an old look, one of ancient knowledge and greed and the absolute superiority of something that never saw the world as anything but something to devour. The look passed and Ankh was just tired and rueful.] Until a hobo with no greed in his heart stumbled into our awakening and showed me why humanity is worth helping out.

[[Continued on the overflow post.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

007 | Clean Up Your Act

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