destinystrings | burgers and explosions;

Entry tags:

burgers and explosions;

Who: Taro and OPEN
Where: Capricorn, in the Central Park
Summary: Taro may originally be Japanese but he's been in America long enough to consider himself American. Certain traditions should be followed.
Warnings: ... Not really.
Music: America Fuck Yeah [NSFW]

After making his network post, Taro goes back to cooking his burgers. It's hard to get it just right, but he's had plenty of time to practice and enough fast food jobs to know how to make sure it looks good. He's got a blanket spread out with cups and bowls for the soda and the chips respectively, and there's the sounds of Bon Jovi music if anyone gets close, despite there being no CD player.

Later in the night, Taro's got a lighter out and the fireworks ready. None of them are really big, but they're loud. Someone might find him either right before he lights one, or after - they're not exactly quiet and the explosions are probably audible from a long distance away.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yep! Grab a plate and a bun and I'll pull one off the grill for you.

Got it!

[After quickly devouring his donut, he'll wander on over and grab a bun and plate, as told. Ahhh, it's nice to clog the arteries every once in a while...]

[It totally is. He happily puts a burger on the bun.]

Enjoy!

[Yessss. Though with his pain tolerance as it is, he'll have to be careful about eating too quickly.]

Thanks! Ayumu's food is great and all, but it just doesn't beat burgers every once in a while, y'know?

[It's just too refreshingly healthy.]

Yeah, I know that feeling. I like having this kind of stuff, too. ... I'm used to eating pretty unhealthy.

[Hizumi gives an exasperated sigh.]

His brother's the same way about food. I was glad enough to get away from that guy when I came here, so getting to eat snacks again was just icing on the cake!

Really? That's kind of lame.

Tell me about it!

[It was definitely a relief, not having to live with Kiyotaka when he first arrived here. For... various reasons, really. The thought leaves him somewhat disgruntled even as he takes a large bite out of his burger.]

I guess I'm kind of lucky. I can look like whatever I want so I don't really have to worry about getting fat. And I've never heard of a tanuki dying of heart disease or something, so... yep.

[It's not until he's chewed and swallowed that he replies, thankfully.]

Healthy diet or not, I'm pretty sure I live an active enough lifestyle to more or less burn it all off anyway. I didn't really think about healthy diets until I started living with people who did.

[And even then, he still clearly doesn't care enough to take it under deep consideration at all.]

Ah, I guess. I'm not really the sort of person who stays cooped up inside, usually. And heists are pretty physically taxing too...

[Oho.]

What kinds of heists?

A lot of different kinds. A museum, every so often, but sometimes a private collection or an auction house. Mostly art, since it sells pretty well on the black markets.

Gee, you really were a pro thief, weren't you?

Yep! Illusions come in handy.

I'll bet. Stealing from places like that must've been a cinch.

[Om nom nom.]

Eh, not that easy, but easier than you'd think.

You'd know better than me.

[Devil he may be, but aside from unfortunate immortality, he doesn't really have anything that would be considered a super power. Well, aside from the Personas here.]

How's it all work, anyway?

How's what all work?

Your illusions. You can fool any of the senses, right? But isn't that kind of thing usually limited to just sight?

Sight, touch, and sound are the usual ones, yeah. If you're in a convincing human form -

[He gestures to himself.]

- you can't feel like you have fur, and if you want to play music -

['La Cucaracha' as performed by a car horn, plays briefly before dying off.]

- you've got to be able to convince people of that too. Taste is... probably the least used, and at least in my case is mostly changed when you want someone to stop stealing your cookies or something. Smell is... mostly just used around animals.

As for how the mechanics of it work, I don't really know. Some people have tried to study it, though. Think of it like... a glass of water outside. You can take a drink from it or spill it out for your use as you see fit. The rain will refill it, though it's more of a waiting game. You can also refill it from something else, which lessens the water in whatever you fill it from.

People who are nonhuman - as in a hundred percent, not born from a human parent - can use everything in the glass. Half-humans can use anywhere from fifty to seventy five percent, depending on what they do and how much they work at it. The magic is still there, just not useable - like ice. If you're three-quarters human, you can use somewhere between fifteen to thirty three percent, though I've heard of people pushing it further than that. Anything less than a quarter non-human can't use it at all, or can use so little that they might as well not be able to use it.

That's as far as I know. Humans might be able to pull off magic in my world - real magic, not David Copperfield - but I've never seen or heard of a confirmed case of it.

Interesting...

[And he means it, chewing contemplatively on the last of his burger.]

I wonder what caused magic to be so fundamentally different between all of these worlds. I mean, aside from the obvious, but we've clearly got a few alternate earths, along with completely different worlds that still managed to develop humans alongside different flora and fauna. Even going off of the many worlds interpretation, some of those minute changes should have had some large consequences on even the common structures of the creatures that inhabit those places.

[A rhetorical question. It's something he's wondered about a few times on his own, but as with many things he's discovered since coming here, it's not something that's particularly easy to find any solid answers for.]

True. The more religiously-minded of supernatural creatures would probably attribute it to one god or another, or something like Fate. Before everything started getting messed up, at least. But the universe... well, it's got natural laws and stuff like that, but the universe is still pretty chaotic. Physics and astronomy aren't my sort of fields, but given infinite possibilities, isn't it possible for anything to happen?

[Hm...]

The phrase 'supernatural' is kind of weird, too. It implies that we're not natural, but it's really the best word I can come up with aside from 'people'. Most people assume 'people' is the same thing as 'humans'. We are natural, at least for our world.

[It's just for a split second, but there is a flicker of unease on his face. No matter how you looked at it, his own existence is anything but natural, especially from this point of view.

However, it quickly returns to its usual soft smile.]

...I guess so. And humans area always distancing themselves from nature, even if they evolved from it just like any other creature.

Makes you wonder just how much of it might really be the work of some gods.

Yeah. I don't... know, myself. I've never found a god to ask. Or really wanted to, anyway.

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