lostcarnival | ⇨ SHABONDAMASHII

Entry tags:

⇨ SHABONDAMASHII

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 92 - Day 99
Where: Shabondamashii Bathhouse
What: With the Silver Mirror claimed and the animals of Eden relocated, it's time for the carnival to kick back and enjoy an interdimensional bathhouse and the surrounding festival city. Meanwhile, the scattered shards of the Mirror have an unexpected effect.
Warnings: Dark/Light halves acting weird.

THE BIG CLEANSE↴

As the carnival recovers, the Ringmaster has brought it to the gates of a famous interdimensional bathhouse to rest. She won't be joining you for most of it, though she will be checking in frequently and available by radio. She's fixed a large portion of the Silver Mirror after it shattered, but it seems like pieces are missing. She doesn't want to rest until the missing shards are dealt with, and the Mirror itself is locked away safely.

► YOUR OTHER HALF: The shards missing from the Silver Mirror didn't just disappear - after breaking apart in Eden, fragments of the object embedded themselves in the spirits of those not already touched by its powers, and those that had been the most fae-touched. That means, your characters. The effect of this, explained in more detail on the plotting post, is that some characters will be splitting into two versions of themselves: the Light, and the Dark. This doesn't mean good and evil, of course, it's far more complicated than that.

Splits can start happening at any time after arriving in Shabon, and initially characters won't know how to rejoin with their twins. Later on, it will become apparent that they need to reconnect via the shard of the Mirror they share... of course, in order to rejoin, you have to have both halves, and not all twins will be as eager to go back to the way things were before. This plot point is optional.

► SPA DAY: When you're not engaging in metaphysical division, you are free to enjoy the many luxuries that Shabon offers. Things will mostly have an east-Asian bend, like what you would see in the movie Spirited Away, but as long as it doesn't affect the setting much, you can honestly have whatever spa-type services available that you want. Food is served both in restaurants and 'buffet' style. There are also well paid sex workers here, if that is your thing, but make sure to tip well.

► FESTIVAL TOWN: The city surrounding Shabondamashii is largely meant to catch the business of interdimensional tourists. There are frequent parades and other events held, and the architecture is very closely packed. It's easy to get lost if you leave the bathhouse, but it's definitely worth it if you like party. You can pick out a few outfits for yourself and some fun nick nacks, but nothing that would normally require mod approval.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hanamaru's yukata is more understated and floral. She's not wearing any shoes, thanks to her tanuki paws for feet, but has a very cute hair accessory that pulls back her hair to show off her ears. She also has a chocolate covered banana on a stick in one hand and chicken on a stick in another. Baths are great and relaxing is great: but Hanamaru's here for the food at the moment.

"Eruka!" And ooh, Eruka's talking about food, Hanamaru's distracted for a moment. "Heh heh, I've already eaten about three of those, zura." How can someone so skinny eat so much, it's a mystery for the ages.

"But enough about that! You've gotta tell me how you've been, zura!" Especially since all the info that Hanamaru's heard about what's happening with the carnival now is...a little bit worrying and a little bit conflicting.

( ooc: Hanamaru was pretty much here for all of Year 2 but bugged off before the vampires. you know me, I'm flexible, let's assume some shit. )

Now there's a voice she hasn't heard in a while. Eruka's ears perk up when she hears Hanamaru's voice, immediately swinging around from skewers of grilled squid(? Hard to say, they are in a completely different world so who knows what they have for livestock here!) to beam at her.

"Maru! You're back!" She has pretty good reason to be surprised, considering she thought the other girl might have finished out her contract in the time she's been gone, but it's nice to see a familiar face ... although the circumstances are perhaps less than ideal. Someone familiar also means someone else to complain at histrionically, and Eruka's lip wobbles for just a few seconds before she bursts out, flailing.

"Everything's crazy now!" Not that the Carnival wasn't crazy before, what with being a world-hopping place of entertainment and all that. "We're stealing artifacts, getting trapped in prisons ... and everyone else working for the acquisitioner is creepy!"

See, Hanamaru's only gotten a little bit of the 'surprise, everything is batshit' talk. So as soon as Eruka mentions 'stealing things' and 'getting imprisoned,' her expression goes from happy to concerned in a moment's notice. Getting trapped in prisons? That's new. And that's worrying.

"Wait, what d'you mean stealing artifacts? We're a carnival, not a buncha thieves, zura!"

Hanamaru, are you for real? Eruka pauses in her self-pity tirade long enough to blink at Hanamaru, like she's realizing there might have to be some very basic misconceptions she has to address here first.

"Maru ... a bunch of us have always been thieves. Literally. That's the job we were assigned." Well, it's not what the job is called anymore, but that's neither here nor there! Eruka sighs and puts her hands on her hips.

"The Carnival's different. It probably isn't the best time to be back..."

Having spent most of her time shoved in performance or medical, Hanamaru doesn't really think much about acquisitions and the fact that yes, there is literally a group of thieves in the carnival.

"You know what I mean," she grumbles a little bit. "Even though we've got y'all and the Nightrunners, the focus has always been on performing, not stealin' stuff."

Eruka just siiighs, shoulders and ears drooping as she visibly deflates.

"From what I heard, we aren't going to be performing at all anymore," she gripes. Of course, she never performed herself ... but she did contribute the occasional pyrotechnic or two. That was fun.

"Though you got off lucky. Our last stop was pretty rough."

There's a small pause as Hanamaru thinks things over. Though she's not actually biting her lip, everything about her demeanor suggests she's hemming and hawing over what to actually do, as well as trying to take in all the craziness that Eruka's saying.

"D'you wanna talk about what happened?"

On the one hand, Eruka really really wants to whine about this with someone. On the other, she kiiind of thinks dumping all that on Hanamaru isn't much of a 'welcome back' gift. Unlike certain others in the Carnival, she doesn't use alcohol as a coping mechanism, so she's forced to turn to healthier ways of dealing with trauma.

"I don't even know where to start," she finally groans, shoulders sagging.

Hanamaru doesn't mind having all this dumped on her. 'Welcome back' gift or not, she needs to know what happened and how it happened in the first place. So, time for Eruka to just blabber trauma at her.

"Start from the beginning, I guess? What's the first weird thing that happened, zura?"

It's going to be a long story, so they might as well be sitting down for it. Looking around, Eruka spots a bench meant for the food stall's patrons and flops down on it miserably.

"Well, first of all, we couldn't go in like this," she gestures down at herself. "In Eden, the Ringmaster had to spell us all into animal shape because there weren't any people there, just talking animals."

And then she pauses. Hanamaru's perfectly aware of how much time she spends as a frog, so...

"I mean, I was a frog there too, so it's not like it was new! It was just being stuck that sucked." Dramatically, she flops back to lie on her back on her side of the bench, groaning.

Indeed, Hanamaru is about to sass Eruka about the fact that more often than not, she's a talking animal herself. Thankfully, Eruka continues talking before she can get that out.

"That part doesn't sound too bad, zura." Says the girl with tanuki ears, fangs, and paws. Hanamaru's well aware of the fact that she's a few more fae changes away from being someone's deviantart furry oc. "Which probably means that worse stuff happened after that."

"Well," Eruka groans, planting her elbows on the table. "We started realizing something was probably going to go badly when the first thing they did to us was brand us with iron."

Eruka turns her back to Hanamaru, lifting her hair away from her neck enough to expose Lilith's mark now branded right at the nape. It also obviously looks raw and tender still, like a healing burn.

She lets out a shocked little "zura!" of surprise like a goddamn Pokemon as she looks at Eruka's burn. That looks awful! Like, super awful! What kind of barbaric place did the carnival go to?

"And everyone got one of those?"

She's a bit traumatized now.

See, this, this is why Eruka didn't want to say anything! Now that it's out there now, though, there's not really any point in cutting the story off halfway.

"Everyone," she confirms, sighing. She turns back to Hanamaru, fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. "It looked like it hit some of them pretty bad ... we actually had some people pass out."

Iron weakness sucks!

Iron weakness does suck. Hanamaru looks super worried as she looks over at Eruka's burn, frowning still.

"Why'd they do that? I don't know what kinda crazy justification you can have for hurting people!"

"Well," Eruka grimaces. "It was the 'Flame of Inspiration,' so they were using it to give animals all sorts of crazy talents. Like art, and dancing, and all that." She waves her hands, magic nonsense, you know how it is with the Carnival, Hanamaru.

"And I mean ... you're good at singing, Maru, but it was crazy. They were so good at art they could use it to bend reality and stuff!" Or something like that. Possibly the bending reality was not a consequence of the art itself but a precursor to it, but Eruka missed that bit of exposition so Maru's getting her butchered infodump instead.

"But ... it turns out they weren't just giving people inspiration for fun."

As Eruka waves her hand, Hanamaru nods. Magic nonsense, she's got it. She's learned to roll with weird magic shit happening and everyone treating it as normal. She continues to listen to Eruka's explanation, gasping a little at the idea of being so good at art that they could bend reality.

Even with her singing, she could never be as good as that!

"I take it there was something super bad about them giving everyone inspiration, zura."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

⇨ SHABONDAMASHII

feeling festive!

we'll just play it by ear, the usual etc

eyyyy time to bullshit.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject