destinystrings | [ MOSTLY OPEN ] shoppingshoppingshopping

Entry tags:

[ MOSTLY OPEN ] shoppingshoppingshopping

Who: Joshua [OU] (

componere), Kairi [AU3] (

princessofheart), and YOU
Where: The Pisces and Libra Apartments, then a LOT of shops in Virgo, then to the library in Aquarius, then back home. P MUCH ALL DAY SATURDAY (04/13)
Summary: Joshua continues his mission of doing nothing productive with regards to anything he's supposed to do in the city (or is he)
Warnings: Joshua Kiryuu is a fiend and a curse and plague etc etc etc

[ OPTION 1 ]

[ Joshua is rooting around the plants on all floors of the Pisces apartment, especially the ones on the top floor, noting the varieties and species and writing them down in a small notepad. He'll also hit up the Libra apartments a little later in the morning.

If a very busy fifteen year old doesn't catch your character's interest, there's always the option of yours catching his - negatively. If you happen to be in his way, smelling the roses, he'll aim a bit of an annoyed look at you. ]

You mind? I'm on a tight schedule today.

[ OPTION 2 ]

[ - whoa hey where did all the urgency from earlier in the day go? Now that he's made it to the Virgo district, his mood seems to have improved enormously. If you want Joshua in a darn right happy-go-lucky mood, he'll be waltzing through the shops in 104, people-watching and people-judging. Does anyone here know how to dress themselves?

Alternatively, you can also find him in a local flower shop and laugh as he looks around, looking decidedly closed off and out of place, i.e. oh god what am I even doing here ]

[ OPTION KAIRI THIS IS KAIRI'S OPTION ]

[ ~~dong ding where da ladies at~~

No, actually, this is shop three on his list and he's looking remarkably put out by now. Ugh... this errand is the farthest thing from worth his time ever. He knows that he's ~*supposed*~ to be doing this because Upstairs says so but oh my god this is so mundane and stupid and definitely irrelevant to his Shibuya, can he go now? Sorry, Kairi, he'll be passing right by the register, lost in his own thought.

btw, he has an bag over his shoulder with something heavy and not clothing shaped inside. What in Lapin Angelique's winter collection 2008 are you doing, Yoshiya Kiryuu??? ]

[ OPTION 4]

[ Late that evening, he's so done with today. Joshua is in the library with a book in one hand and a guitar case under his other elbow. He seems to be looking up guitar tabs, migrating slowly to the nearest lines of study rooms to play. If he ends up giving you a love-tap with the case, he'll grandly and elegantly refuse to give a shit. However, the right kind of person doing something interesting could give him pause. Right now, he definitely needs a distraction. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[If the right kind of person doing something interesting constitutes the epitome of geekdom sitting at a table surrounded by piles of books, then Joshua has found the right person. Atsuro's laptop is set before him, of course, though at the present he's flipping through a text with an expression of boredom on his face. If Joshua glances closer, the words on both the page and the screen are dotted with such choice gems as 'Cyclopean', 'tenebrous', and 'ghastly', all evocative of rather pleasant imagery.

Strange, though. Atsuro's brand of geekery usually ran in a slightly different direction. Not that Joshua would be aware of that.]

Hey!

[The guitar case gently caresses Atsuro in the face.]

Watch where you're going.

[ Well, doesn't Joshua feel like an asshat! Nah, he doesn't, he just looks back at this huge nerd, his eyebrows raising in a somewhat confrontational "does it look like I give half a fuck" expression. It's a hilariously fussy expression on Joshua, seeing as he's as intimidating as riled chihuahua in this form. He's had a pretty long day and he doesn't have patience for fielding petty mortal concerns like common courtesy.

Joshua backs up and studies the first book he sees among the many piled up on the table, about to come up with a backhanded comment about this person's new unhealthy love affair, but his wrung out brain IDs the subject matter. Looks like someone's either doing a lot of wonderfully productive extracurriculars or has a thing for the eldritch. he doesn't really care about the latter, but the former... ]

Tentacles, huh? Not that I'm judging, but... [ ... a smirk. ] There's a market for everything, I suppose.

...

Does anyone in this place not have an unnatural fixation on tentacles...?

[Joshua's suspicions are probably confirmed when Atsuro closes the book - 'The H.P. Lovecraft Collection'. The specific and highly characteristic tone of the writing didn't translate terribly well to Japanese, but it was as faithful an effort as could be expected.]

Look, tentacle monsters are like, in one story. Maybe two. Nyarly didn't even have any tentacles when we met him.

What can I say? The reputation precedes reality, as always.

[ joshua turns back, studying this guy from head to toe... tut tut. this person's fashion sense is almost as atrocious as neku's. joshua pivots a little, studying this stranger's face. does he have enough time and patience for this right now...? ]

Pet names already? My, you're moving quickly. When did you meet, exactly?

I figured it couldn't hurt to try and take things a little less seriously. If he doesn't have tentacles, he does seem to cause mass outbreaks of gibbering insanity wherever he goes.

[Atsuro gives a small shrug.]

I'd rather not be shut up in a padded room yet - think of all the games I haven't played!

[Atsuro's fashion sense, if it exists, has certainly retreated to a padded room long ago, anyway.]

[ laughing in the face of danger? humor might not be the safest way to deal with cosmic horror, but it's certainly a human reaction. ]

I'm sure he'd appreciate it! An eldritch abomination like that must have some isolation-related issues... Perhaps all he needed was a little affection. I'm surprised that the presence of an elder one didn't reduce you to a mumbling vegetable, though. What happened?

...I'll tell you what. If you ever run into him, you can see if you can't hug him to death. I'll stick with the Almighty attacks.

[Atsuro closes his laptop as well and leans back, as it didn't look like this guy was going away anytime soon. ...Or apologizing.]

A bunch of us ran into him a few months ago. No one gave you the details?

[ Joshua makes a face. ] Who, me? I'll donate the idea to a do-gooder. You go ahead with your Almighty attacks.

[ please please please for the love of god don't hold your breath for that apology ]

I've had several overviews thrust my way, and there has certainly been a lot of gossip... but nothing concrete or firsthand.

[Atsuro was probably a good person to ask for first-hand information, though it didn't mean he liked reliving it much. The whole mess was pretty complicated; it was hard to know where to start. Back then, it had been one thing stringed along after another... The Grand Prix, the Anoli attacks, the disappearance of Brainwave and the others, the Shining Trapezohedron, the Tower of Animus... bam, bam, bam, no respite in between. In hindsight, it was amazing to think that he had gone through all of that unscathed.

...As unscathed as could be expected, anyway.]

...It's kind of a long story.

[Translation: Please ask me to keep it short.]

Alright, I guess we can start with what you know about Nyarlathotep. Did you ever read H.P. Lovecraft? ...If I asked about a Trapezo...whatever, would you know what I meant?

[ Joshua puts his guitar case down and grabs a chair, settling in. As long as Joshua can ask lots of questions afterward, he doesn't particularly care what this kid tells him, even if it's a lie. (It doesn't seem as though he's lying, though - It's been offhand thread after throwaway comment, and it didn't look like he was fishing for anything in particular. Still, Joshua realized and appreciated that he wasn't the only accomplished liar in the world.) ]

Well, don't let me stop you, then.

Yes, I did, actually. [ He's been through as much material on Nyarlathotep as he could find in library, various bookstores, and whatever he could pry out of *Hyun-ae since his arrival. Busy busy busy on the intellectual front, less so on the Persona bit. ] The Shining Trapezohedron... That was an artifact that could see into all dimensions, space and time, correct?

Weren't you making fun of me five minutes ago for knowing about this stuff? [He mumbles something inaudible apart from the word 'tentacle'.] But yeah, that's right. The Shining Trapezohedron was an... artifact that could summon Nyarlathotep.

We found it. ...Here.

[A short pause.]

Not exactly working the same way as in the stories. Apparently, it can be used for... teleporting people between worlds.

Not that it means Nyarlathotep didn't have any connection with it, since the first thing it did was teleport half of us to the world he was hiding in.

[ joshua absolutely was! he is also absolutely not above being a hypocrite, doubly so if he thinks it's funny. ]

I see... So that was what the seven found in that video, right? [ now the question was if the trapezohedron had randomly sent them to a place where an aspect of nyarlathotep had taken root, or if nyarlathotep deliberately drew them from one plane to another using the trapezohedron. who has control, here? ]

You were all gone quite a while, weren't you? Sent to some mysterious prison tower called Animus where others were kept with a far more watchful eye than we, if I recall correctly.

Oh. You were around for that.

[A few blinks. It had almost sounded like he hadn't known about the previous month's events at all.]

Right. I'd say we were gone for the better part of the month, but it wasn't until the very last day that he showed himself.

[Probably because him showing himself was directly connected with them getting kicked out of Animus.]

In the meantime, we just... kept an eye out for clues. I don't think Animus itself is directly related, so I won't get into the details.

[The less time spent thinking about that place, the better.]

But Nyarlathotep... He created a maze to... lure us in. Or something. I'm a little foggy on the details, but it definitely wasn't because of anything we did that he decided to show himself. ...Maybe it's just his nature to toy with his prey.

As far as I know, it was me and a few others who reached him first. He showed himself as one of the 'administrators' of the Tower, but it was pretty clear what he was.

Hmm... Like I said, I've heard stories. [ read: he got here in the middle of march and has been inhaling information since.

thanks to meetra, joshua is fairly sure he's up to speed on everything he'd want to know about the tower anyway, so he'll just settle back for the story. ]

So it was a game of cat and mouse, ultimately... A game that could have started from the discovery of the Trapezohedron, if you'd like to go that far.

...Right.

[He nods in agreement with Joshua's words.]

It's no coincidence that it showed up when it did. I thought about it, too - If he was baiting us to come find him. ...But it didn't work out so well for him in the end, and... it doesn't seem to... fit, exactly.

[He couldn't explain it exactly, but the nature of the Trapezohedron... Perhaps it had acted as a tool of Nyarlathotep, but at the same time, it had seemed to exhibit a will of its own as well.]

It's still around, you know. And still functional.

...Anyway. Nyarlathotep... I still don't know what he was trying to do. Rob us of hope? Show us how worthless it all was? ...But he knew all of our insecurities, and he honed in on them, hoping we would break.

Doesn't he sound like a keeper. [ rhetorical statement, said facetiously. ] Between him and the Trapezohedron, I wonder who wears the pants? So to speak.

Do you know where it is now? I don't suppose they'd keep it on public display. Gateway into the fathomless abyss of eternity and so forth, you know?

...Nyarly probably has too many tentacles for pants. And the Shining Trapezohedron is too trapezohedronic to fit in pants.

[Atsuro is a helper.]

It's probably in the labs somewhere - the basic idea seems to be that you can access other worlds through it. We had some people pulled in when we first discovered it.

As long as he thinks he's got it, he should flaunt it. First rule of fashion. [ joshua pushes some of his hair back with a casual flip of his hand. ] Who knows? Maybe he could work a pair of corduroys.

[ joshua shivers theatrically. ] My, don't I feel safe, mm? Living in a post-apocalyptic Japan with a school of scientists experimenting with space-time somewhere in the next district. Lovely.

[...Atsuro politely declines to comment about neither corduroys nor hair-flips.]

You forgot the demons running around. And the human terrorists. ...And the barrier that supposedly protects us from the apocalyptic monsters roaming around outside.

[Atsuro gives a shrug.]

Anyway... We ended up rallying a Power of Friendship kind of thing. That put him off long enough for him to go and pick a fight with one of the real Tower administrators, who unceremoniously decided to kick us all out.

So now Nyarly's probably running around in the city or something.

[ :( but :( :( :( why :( :( :( ]

Point taken. There will always be monsters, after all. [ joshua smirks. ]

How very animé, Gainax ending and all. Don't suppose he gave a speech about his next dastardly plan to ambush us, did he?

No, he just looked a little grumpy.

[Atsuro gives a shrug.]

But... There've been a few people already who've let it get to them. The things he said. ...Maybe it wasn't a total loss on his side, either.

It was only the first blow.

Aw... That's cute.

Was that all he wanted to do, then? Get us to despair? [ joshua taps his fist against his chin... nah, he'll pass on that. ] These tedious games they play... If he wanted us to destroy ourselves, he could try being a little more proactive about it.

It's psychological manipulation. Just when we think he's gone, he'll come back to whisper dark secrets in our ears.

You were adopted and your parents never loved you.

...Don't question his methods; he's gotta be the master of psychic warfare.

[Lightheartedness was Atsuro's go-to strategy for most crises. It had served him fairly well thus far, though naturally, he had succumbed to terror or panic on occasion as well.]

[ joshua chuckles to himself. ] Well, it's a good thing I was the apple of my parents' eyes. And if he's a master of psychic warfare, I'd love to see his repertoire. [ ahem! joshua is certain that he's the master psychic up in these parts thank yooooooooou

either way, it should be obvious from his relaxed mannerisms and speech that he's not taking nyarlathotep as seriously as he really ought to be.]

[He wasn't quite sure where that had come from, but in hindsight, Atsuro could probably be accused of not having his parents' love pretty fairly.]

...Anyway.

That's about all I've got on Nyarly. He's lain low since then, so... about a month and a half. He might have escaped into another world already, but there's no doubt he has a special connection to this one.

He's probably the reason we're here in the first place. Defeat him, and maybe this world will be 'saved' and we'll go home.

4

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject