WEEKS 5 & 6

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WEEKS 5 & 6

THE CALM BEFORE...

The city has more or less bounced back after the disastrous Go-Kart race. While there are still some people recovering, no one’s hospitalized and there were thankfully no casualties - although there were more injuries than might have been expected, on accounts of some brawls that broke out among the competitors and the audience.

In spite of that, the Shopping District is feeling distinctly friendlier these days. Shopkeepers will take notice of repeat customers and be openly happy to see the better-behaved ones. They may even cut characters a discount on the sly for their patronship!

Perhaps as a result, the Nekyia Shopping District has become clear of haze much like the Nekyia dormitory started. While Shadows still lurk there, they are much fewer in number. Should characters choose to explore some more, they will find that the haze has become thinner in the Nekyia Entertainment District, allowing them to work on cleaning out the various Shadows that reside in that area.

WHAT THE FLUFF.

Meanwhile, back at the dormitory…

…trouble is amiss, but the fun kind of trouble.

On Sunday, September 1st, it seems like there's an event for pets being hosted at the parks near the dorm! That's fine and dandy, but the trouble comes from owners being careless and letting their animals run loose. That's right, some of them have been given free rein to explore, and a number of them have taken a liking to the dormitory!

You might be able to blame Dawn – that cat from the Nekyia who also appears to give you strange items! – because she's got bowls of cat food around her that she's feasting on. It's attracted some pet cats and strays alike. As for the dogs, well, they like people. Enough said.

Why not treat yourself to some animal therapy while you can? And if not, wrangling any animals that manage to get free works too!

SUMMER DAYS.

As summer break draws to a close, the Arcade is desperate to not only redeem its reputation, but also squeeze the last bit of pocket change out of people while they’re still on vacation. As a result, there is an ongoing discount on point cards allowing people to play competitive arcade games - Classics like Mirmo Kart and Street Slayer, as well as shinier rhythm games like Dancerun Stardom and LaiLai Universe Plus!

Of course, the hope is that characters drawn in by the arcade games will stick around for the other offerings - karaoke, bowling, ufo catchers, and even a bar (for those 21+!) And if none of these attractions are enough to catch a character’s eye, there’s plenty of other activities to be found in Carnation Court. Besides the restaurants and bars, there are many themed pop-up cafés and events, and even a few empty buildings with a very reasonable lease fee, should someone want to run an event of their own...

While the mood isn’t as open and friendly as the shopping district, it’s still worth a visit to relax and unwind a bit, preferably alongside Braphine’s other chosen. After all, there are Shadows looming on the horizon...

MESSAGE FROM YOUR RA!

Huh...? That's weird. It looks like a really big Shadow took up residence in the Nekyia. Hold on, I'll set things up so the app will give you the coordinates! Could you please check it out?

COMMISSIONS

NEKYIA COMMISSIONS

FETCH QUEST

I messed up…Mom's gonna be so mad at me for losing track of her dog at that event…

There's a shadow in the Nekyia that's taken the form of a Level 25 Nue. It seems to be growling in despair, and echoing the thoughts of this commissioner. Apparently this person lost his mother's dog at the event and hasn't made an effort to find it yet. Fight the Nue and try to knock some sense into this guy, either by shaking some sense into him or by defeating him; they've got a dog to find, after all.

YOU KNOW THAT WE'RE TOXIC

Leave, Braphine. Leave this world to the people. We don't need anyone. We've only got ourselves.

Seems like someone who might be involved with the vandalism incident might have a shadow here, too, in the form of a Level 24 Mokoi. She sounds like she's going to do something more extreme to the place if she isn't stopped. However, be careful… characters hit with Dazzler from this particular Shadow cannot be cured with magic, and must instead be healed by another person’s touch. It’s time to get cozy with your companions.

GET HEE OUTTA HERE

A powerful Shadow has appeared in the Nekyia and needs to be eliminated asap! Black Frost is a tenacious (if cute?) little guy, and can only be fought after taking down three Level 28 Jack Frosts beforehand. Make sure you ration out your spiritual energy and healing spells, this little Shadow can pack a real punch, being at Level 30! That said, for those who manage to defeat him, he should drop a mascot trading card. Turn this in to the priest or priestess at the temple to unlock a bonus new skill for your Persona!

(OOC: Please turn in your threads for this commission on the rewards page to unlock the new skill, which is separate from your leveling skillset! You may select one elemental skill for light damage to apply permanently to your character's persona. When turning in the skill will be effective immediately once rewarded.)

REAL WORLD COMMISSIONS

FINE DINING

Various restaurants, from fast food and fast casual grub to the fine dining establishments in Carnation Court are trying to outdo each other in terms of promotion, and as such are on the prowl for any free hands to help entice potential customers with free samples and food challenges galore. Grab a buddy and help hawk some bite-sized treats! Or maybe try to beat the record for the biggest burger ever eaten, if you dare.

ALL HANDS ON STAGE

A number of performers were involved in the Go-Kart incident and have yet to fully recover enough to do their parts for the show! For the next two weeks, the Sunset Grand Theater is looking for understudies for roles, as well as stage hands who are willing to ninja around and maneuver props and sets for the actors. The production is a fanciful tale of starcrossed lovers, evil stepmothers, political feuds, and for some reason, a dragon.

PREPARE THE PETS

The pet store in Vermillion Village is looking for some volunteers to help socialize the pets through playtime, as well as feed some of the more persnickety ones. Those who want to pet some adorable balls of fluff and energy can work with the kittens, puppies, and bunny rabbits, while those who are brave enough can try their hand at feeding the reptiles their meals of live crickets and frozen rats.

OOC

READ ME!!!!

Welcome to your log for Weeks 5 and 6! Feel free to use this log for any developments that happen during the next two weeks. There will be no log next week, but we will still be posting a small mini-event on Saturday.
For plotting, please feel free to head over to this post on the OOC comm to post your plotting top levels.
For Nekyia commissions, you can assume that the Shadows will respawn until they've been beaten enough times to go back to normal.
Palaces start this week! Please refer to the Palace schedule here and sign ups for this week's capped Palace here

ic comm | inboxes | ooc comm | full nav

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Comments

[vogelfrei]

You can give that back now.

[ Both because this is humiliating and because he doesn't really want the whole 'friend murder' conversation to be seen on his account. The cat is basically out of the bag to everyone who can put 1 and 1 together, but that doesn't mean he enjoys having the smoking gun out in the open. ]

[imperiosity]

[Wow what a killjoy. Aaron does not look remotely apologetic at all, but he will toss the phone over in the direction of the couch McGillis is on. Too bad I rolled a 5, so it's probably ending up in the crack of the couch by his legs!! Ah well.]

Should lock it if you don't want people messing with it. Though, I guess it paid off this time, seeing as you're not hospitalized and all.

[vogelfrei]

[ ........... great. He knows he can't reach it over there and he's not even going to disgrace himself by trying. At least it's within a range where he can kick people trying to get it?? He'll see about getting it back into his good hand later. ]

Lucky, lucky me.

[ Being hospitalized might be better than this!! ]

Once again we could not find out if the ambulance would ever come.

[imperiosity]

[It's kind of funny seeing McGillis being so tetchy considering his usual composure, so like. Worth it.]

Guess you'll have to wait and see if the third time's the charm.

[Not that he WANTS there to be a third time but it's less like a possibility and more like an inevitability with this group.]

Too bad the cops'll probably be right along with 'em once they see whatever mess we leave next.

[vogelfrei]

[ On the one hand, he should be extra touchy about the way Aaron seems to finds this amusing... But on the other hand, it's a bit of a relief that Aaron is approaching this with the same non-chalant attitude he always has. It's easy to play off of, giving back a sense of normalcy.

After such a long time constructing a facade, it's hard to stomach it being broken down after all. ]

It would be troublesome to have our phones confiscated, that's true.

[ Otherwise he doesn't think the Sunset City cops can really do much of note to this group of insane people. ]

I'm not that invested in studying the emergency care system of this place.

[imperiosity]

[Aaron barks out a laugh at that, one filled more with derision than mirth.]

Could've fooled me with the way you were asking for an ass-kicking. Was getting the city's emergency response time just a bonus for you then?

[vogelfrei]

[ Ah, there it is. The judgement that is, if McGillis is honest with himself, pretty well-deserved. Being aware of that much does not improve McGillis' mood.

Maybe he should have just aimed to kill Izou instead. Maybe that would have spared him the miserable embarrassment of this pizza party. (Or maybe he shouldn't have listened to his most childish impulses in the first place.) ]

I'm nothing if not thorough in my research.

[ Pointless banter, stalling for time. But then: ]

... I know full well this was idiotic.

[imperiosity]

[The one and only saving grace of this incident was that no one else turned up dead, so if Izou really had ended up with a bullet in his head after such blatant provocation, Aaron wouldn't have cared to stay neutral in this dispute. As it is, McGillis is already on thin ice for a number of reasons.

Aaron snorts at the response, although its clear that it's not about the banter.]

Then why'd you do it? You feeling lonely without someone chasing you down?

[vogelfrei]

... you read all that, then.

[ McGillis is silent for a moment. He hadn't intended to be anything but perfectly anonymous when he initially replied to that post, but he wound up waiving that right when he called Izou by name. It's only truly catching up with him now - he spent a lot of the previous hours being on the brink of death and all.

Lonely... It's blatant mockery, but there is an element of truth to it that tastes bitter. He'd had Gaelio for a moment, and now he's here and there's death and worlds between them. It's a weird place to be in when you're just processing that you admitted you want somebody. ]

I didn't like the thought of just waiting for the other shoe to drop. So I childishly decided to smash it all by myself. It doesn't suit me, I know. Judge as much as you want.

[ With his arm in the state he's in, he can't even fully turn away, so he can just turn his head instead. It really does make him look like a two meters tall pouting little boy. ]

[imperiosity]

Don't know why you're surprised. Didn't exactly make a secret of me being on that post.

[He was one of the few people that responded with their own accounts, after all. With that said, considering McGillis was busy dealing with a murder attempt soon after Izou made his intentions abundantly clear, maybe he should be cutting the guy some slack, but... meh. Especially if he's practically being given an invitation to judge, even if he didn't need it to begin with.]

Hah. Not like I was waiting your permission. Still, it's not like I can say I know what actually suits you after you dropped that bombshell. Aiming for someone's face in self-defense is one thing, but I wouldn't have taken you for a guy who murders his friends.

[He may not be angry in the way Izou was on that post, but Aaron isn't lacking when it comes to contempt.]

[vogelfrei]

[ Well. There's not a whole lot he can say to that because he did very much intentionally kill two of the people who love him most in the whole world. Formidable friends who changed his life for the better. There's no way to make it sound pretty or justified - it was just the decision McGillis Fareed would always have made, because he cannot help being himself. ]

If it helps, I have no interest in repeating the act.

[ He doesn't even have any friends right now, so there is little risk to begin with. ]

Many of us are murderers one way or another - it teaches one the dangers of judging a book by its cover, I suppose.

[imperiosity]

'Cause you can't or 'cause there's no point?

[Not that he's inclined to take any answer at face value, but while they're here in pizza party interrogation hours, Aaron feels like he might as well ask.]

But I can't disagree with you there. Still, you gotta admit it takes a special kind of batshit to go after someone you care about.

[A murderer is one thing -- he can understand going after someone who wronged you or even someone you don't care about, but he can never understand killing a friend unless it's supposed to be an act of mercy.]

[vogelfrei]

[ Batshit... He's been called many things, but batshit insane was actually not among them yet! He takes a bit of offense, even if the context means that he is in no position to defend himself about this. ]

He repaid all of that in full, at least.

[ Taking revenge for having been wronged is not nearly as offensive as betraying someone in the first place, but still.

Back to the actually pertinent question though: ]

At the time, I felt it was the only way to progress to my goal. The circumstances surrounding the decision have changed in a lot of ways.

[imperiosity]

[There's definitely a vibe of 'you totally deserved it' here, because a desire for vengeance is something he can relate to well, even if Aaron wouldn't necessarily say that he'd have done the same thing.]

Yeah, I imagine dying puts a real big wrench in anything. So should I take that as a little from column A and a little from column B? Or are you still aiming for it even though you're all the way back at square one?

[vogelfrei]

My goals were related to my world - and if I return there, I simply return to death. It's over.

[ And that really is the root cause of all the spiraling he's been doing since the day he first opened his eyes in front of the dorms. Ever since he was 10 years old, McGillis has been following only the path laid out before him by the discovery of Agnika Kaieru. Of course the details were tweaked as he grew older and his opinions grew more complex, but nothing ever changed at the core of it all: McGillis' life was the road to Bael.

Bael is damaged (if not destroyed, he shudders to think) and all that Bael stood for is beyond the veil of the afterlife.

McGillis remains in aimless darkness, and though he's been trying to keep up appearances, he's collapsing on himself. ]

In the end, killing Gaelio was the very thing that stood between me and what I sought to accomplish. Even if I do find new goals, I am unlikely to repeat the same mistake twice.

[ Both because he doesn't have any friends and because if he did he might be tempted to at least try and treat them better... or cast them aside in less dramatic ways. ]

[imperiosity]

[Aaron is a cynical person, no doubt about that. It comes out of growing up in a city dominated by an organization that, while generally benign to the ordinary populace, still engaged in unscrupulous means to maintain its influence in both the criminal underworld and within the spheres of business and politics.

That means his first instinct is to think that McGillis is lying, or at the very least, omitting information to suit his story. Even so, there are pieces that are believable -- McGillis being dead is one of them and losing his goal is another. Perhaps even if any other details or statements were fabricated, he can trust that much.

Not to mention, it is a bit pathetic to see the other man like this, admitting that his actions led to his own undoing. Hell, it's practically poetic the way it worked out, but perhaps that's simply because consequences have a way of biting someone in the ass eventually.]

Hmph... So you learned something from it. How 'bout that. [Even if it sounds more like 'people will fuck me over if I fuck them over' rather than 'murdering friends is a terrible thing', at least to him.] Why were you even so desperate to accomplish that shit anyway?

[vogelfrei]

[ It sounds like that because McGillis doesn't think that anything else would sound at all believable coming from him. It also sounds like that because it's what he actually thinks - any thoughts of changing himself beyond that mere pragmatic approach are still only shadows in the back of his mind. It's scary to become somebody different. ]

There is institutional rot spreading through the very bones of my world's society. I've experienced the consequences of that rot since I was a child.

[ He's not going to give any details on that even if asked, because he's a private individual and more importantly, because the mere idea of using his sobstory as an excuse disgusts him. But this much, he can give. ]

The world needed change and it would not have gotten it bloodlessly.

[imperiosity]

[There's nothing all that surprising about some form of corruption existing where McGillis is from, especially considering what he already alluded to when they talked a bit about Agnika Kaieru. Neither is he all that interested in prying into McGillis' past, because knowing that doesn't change what he did. But it's that last statement that carries an all too familiar sentiment, one that reminds him of bodies littered lifelessly on a street because to some, the ends justified the means.]

Bet you'd get along real well with Heiyue's elders. That, or you'd tear each other's throats out trying to one-up the other, 'cause they're not exactly squeaky clean either.

[vogelfrei]

I have a hard time imagining myself getting along with any kind of elders.

[ Not that he can speak to exactly how things work in the world Aaron is from, but usually elders represent exactly the institutional rot that McGillis so desperately wants to combat. ]

Not that I think this base assumption will change your opinion of me much.

[ To say that he is sad about his rapport with Aaron crashing and burning would be a bit too much, but he does think of it as a net loss. An unintended follow-up to ripping off the bandaid with everybody who had been at Izou's palace. ]

[imperiosity]

Yeah, you got that right. Especially since they don't get along half of the time, either.

[Not that he actually dislikes all of them, mind, but he certainly doesn't agree with the way they handle things. Whether or not that's where he will end up settling when it comes to McGillis is yet to be seen, but he does need some time to sort things out after this conversation.]

So, what's next on the docket? You gonna sit tight and behave until our stay is over?

[vogelfrei]

That's a question you should be asking Izou, no?

[ While he fully understands that people would question him about the deliberate provocation, he'd also like to remind everyone that he is not the one who attempted murder here. ]

Braphine has offered me to send me to another world after all this is over, so she's given me good enough reason to cooperate for the rest of this ordeal.

[imperiosity]

Maybe, but who knows what other harebrained ideas are bouncing around in that head of yours.

[Because when it comes down to it, McGillis was correct when he said that it didn't suit him -- or rather, it didn't suit the image that he'd built up. But having caught a glimpse of what lay beneath the surface, who knows what other questionable decisions might be lurking there? Trust is a fragile thing, and right now it's definitely at an all time low.]

Lucky you, then. A second chance is way more than you'd deserve after pulling all that crap, but that goddess does whatever the hell she wants, I guess.