Well, damn. What are the age limits anyway, I'm pretty sure Essence 10 is 1000 years old but the others...?al103 said:
[Exalted/SMT] Shard of a Broken Sun
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
al103
Grumpy Russian Bear (SV edition)
- Location
- Russia, Krasnoyarsk
6 require 100 years of life IIRC.ShadowAngelBeta said:
Lexica
Persevere
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We have access to infernal cap-breakers as well potentially, so if we're willing to except the downsides we might be able to get really high essence.al103 said:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
No more then one Cap Breaker, period.Wander said:
The only exception is Solars, because they come at it from "Raise my Essence" and "Lower the requiremets", which lets them use Essence 7/Ability 7 Charms with Essence 6/Ability 6 (Gained through Glory to the Most High)
Thank you, but what about Essence 7 to 9?al103 said:
Also over on QQ Valette-Serafina started a Dragon-Blooded quest, we're an Essence 8 and have blatantly super-human abilities. Is that actually a thing that Amu can get to, and if so at what Essence?
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Essence 7: 250 yearsShadowAngelBeta said:
Essence 8: 500 years
Essence 9+: 1000 years
Abilities and Attributes may be increased via experience to a maximum of Permanent Essence. So 6 at Essence 6, 7 at Essence 7, and so on.
Dragonblooded are notably weaker than Exalted in a variety of ways, but they make up for it by being the most numerous (they reproduce, whereas Celestial Exaltations reincarnate) and having Charms that play off that by enhancing DB groups. They're also unable to access Sorcery as powerful as Solars'.ShadowAngelBeta said:
Essence 8 is still hilariously high.
To put things in perspective, an Essence Six Devil-Tiger Infernal can develop an entirely new Charm tree based upon their own themes, completely redesign their Exaltation to fit these themes, and build a world inside their soul. An Essence Eight Devil-Tiger develops their own soul hierarchy, including up to fifteen Third Circle demons each up to Essence 9 (if you're willing to let them stew in their chrysalis for a few months).
Sunday's Melancholy 15
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Sunday's Melancholy, 13:45
They talked and talked, throwing out ideas one after the other, each wilder than the last; from breaking in and calling the elevator, to jumping from floor to floor - that last, Utau pointed out, would be far more tiring than simply walking even if they could avoid falling. Amu might be able to make it to the surface like that, but neither of the others could. Ignoring the issue of her body, which she'd presumably need to leave behind.
Eventually they weren't really trying to solve the problem, just chattering and having fun while waiting for their legs to recover. Just waiting, in Amu's case, but she didn't mind; Utau turned out to have a wicked sense of humour when she wasn't assaulting people, and even Ikuto was a lot of fun. Yet still, all things come to an end.
"No, seriously." Utau gesticulated while talking, illustrating her point by drawing the stairwell in the air. "It's like a chimney, see? Yes, we'd need to remove the stairs first to do it safely, but with sufficient hot air - perhaps provided by Easter's lawyers - I'm sure we could just fly up."
Ikuto shook his head in fake dismay, but couldn't fully repress a smile. "I'm not sure "safely" is the term I'd use, sister dear. For starters, have you considered that there's nowhere else for air to get in, in those amounts? We'd end up suffocating the lawyers!"
Utau blinked artfully. "That would be bad?"
"Aren't they your lawyers, though?" Amu asked. "I mean, you work for Easter -" They both winced. It appeared she'd asked something she shouldn't have.
"That's… not really true," Utau said. "I have a contract saying I do, but…" She looked glum.
"She's a contractor, not an employee. Although the directory of Easter is our stepfather…" Ikuto trailed off. "Never mind, it doesn't matter right now. If we're lucky -" He cut himself off. "Never mind."
The atmosphere had turned dark. Both of the siblings sat quietly, humourlessly eating the last remnants of her lunch. Amu could have kicked herself; just like that, she'd ruined the last few minutes of their break.
"So, um - did you enjoy the food?" She asked, trying to change the subject.
Utau and Ikuto exchanged glances.
"The food was good, Amu-chan, but -" Utau started. Small victory; it was the first time she'd used -chan.
"Don't worry about the thing with Easter," Ikuto continued. "Seriously, that's our headache, if it even matters anymore." He sighed. "We're well enough rested to go on, and if we haven't already had any great ideas then waiting longer won't help. Let's just get this over with." He got up and started stretching, shortly followed by Utau.
Amu looked helplessly between them. Ikuto was wrong; if they were in trouble, then fixing it was just as much her job as his. She couldn't just leave them to their own devices, not now that she felt she was starting to understand them.
As they started trekking up the stairs again, though, even focused effort didn't give her any grand ideas for fixing things.
"I've had - enough - of these motherfucking stairs - in this motherfucking stairwell."
"Language, Utau," Ikuto chided.
A tiny part of Amu's idolisation of Utau went crashing down.
"And then she asked me to sing on that Sunday as well. Can you believe it? Three weeks in a row, and when I finally get a day off, all of a sudden there's some "Guerrilla live" I absolutely have to attend. Come to think of it, wasn't that one of the ones you crashed?"
"Back in February? Um… maybe." She'd done that a few too many times to remember all of them, but if it was one of the first - "Was that the one where the stage lights went crashing down?"
"No, that was the week after… wait. I remember that; they almost hit me head on." Utau glared at her. "I wouldn't have gotten away with just a scratch if they had. Were you trying to kill me?"
"Nonono." She frantically denied it, crossing her arms in front of her. "That was a total accident! I wasn't even up there, it was all -" Well, actually she was up there, as Su. It really was an accident, though. "But we didn't actually hit you, so that makes it okay, right?" Although she was almost certain it didn't.
"This tea doth be excellent," Ikuto stated in broken, archaic Japanese. They looked at him, then burst into giggles; he was sitting in seiza position, looking exceedingly uncomfortable while doing so.
"I… I'm sorry," she said. "Next time we stop I'll make the proper equipment for a tea ceremony, just for you. Utau-chan, you'll help me make it, right?"
Utau chuckled. "Of course I will. For my dear brother, I'll do anything."
Ikuto somehow managed to look even more uncomfortable after that statement.
"Utau?"
"…"
"Ikuto?"
"Iru, please. They're tired," Amu said. Even she was starting to get a little tired, after she'd almost started to think that would never happen. Utau was barely hanging on, and for a while now she'd been carrying herself almost entirely without help from Ikuto.
Iru, Eru and Yoru were, of course, floating happily along without a care in the world. Well, Iru was badgering Eru a lot, but that was apparently how they got along. Amu dismissed any notion of it being a real concern; they'd both started as parts of Utau, so in a way, Eru and Iru not getting along would mean Utau wasn't getting along with herself. True, her own relationship with Ran and Miki was far more tranquil, but Iru badgered everyone. The girl was… a bottomless bundle of energy, frankly.
"Eruuu~" Iru wheedled, flying in tight circles around her sister, who was twisting around to avoid looking at her. "Eru, I'm bored! C'mon, let's play something… Yoru! Geez, leave those two, they'll be fine with Ikuto."
Case in point. Maybe also a little selfish; it was nice of Yoru to keep an eye on her sisters.
She'd be bored too, though, if she'd been slowly flying up somewhere like this for an hour straight. At least they were almost done, she could see the ceiling now.
On second glance, Eru was spending a lot of effort to avoid Iru's gaze, almost flipping upside down at times. Amu smiled lightly; she wasn't sure if Iru would agree, but it looked like they were already playing.
They talked and talked, throwing out ideas one after the other, each wilder than the last; from breaking in and calling the elevator, to jumping from floor to floor - that last, Utau pointed out, would be far more tiring than simply walking even if they could avoid falling. Amu might be able to make it to the surface like that, but neither of the others could. Ignoring the issue of her body, which she'd presumably need to leave behind.
Eventually they weren't really trying to solve the problem, just chattering and having fun while waiting for their legs to recover. Just waiting, in Amu's case, but she didn't mind; Utau turned out to have a wicked sense of humour when she wasn't assaulting people, and even Ikuto was a lot of fun. Yet still, all things come to an end.
"No, seriously." Utau gesticulated while talking, illustrating her point by drawing the stairwell in the air. "It's like a chimney, see? Yes, we'd need to remove the stairs first to do it safely, but with sufficient hot air - perhaps provided by Easter's lawyers - I'm sure we could just fly up."
Ikuto shook his head in fake dismay, but couldn't fully repress a smile. "I'm not sure "safely" is the term I'd use, sister dear. For starters, have you considered that there's nowhere else for air to get in, in those amounts? We'd end up suffocating the lawyers!"
Utau blinked artfully. "That would be bad?"
"Aren't they your lawyers, though?" Amu asked. "I mean, you work for Easter -" They both winced. It appeared she'd asked something she shouldn't have.
"That's… not really true," Utau said. "I have a contract saying I do, but…" She looked glum.
"She's a contractor, not an employee. Although the directory of Easter is our stepfather…" Ikuto trailed off. "Never mind, it doesn't matter right now. If we're lucky -" He cut himself off. "Never mind."
The atmosphere had turned dark. Both of the siblings sat quietly, humourlessly eating the last remnants of her lunch. Amu could have kicked herself; just like that, she'd ruined the last few minutes of their break.
"So, um - did you enjoy the food?" She asked, trying to change the subject.
Utau and Ikuto exchanged glances.
"The food was good, Amu-chan, but -" Utau started. Small victory; it was the first time she'd used -chan.
"Don't worry about the thing with Easter," Ikuto continued. "Seriously, that's our headache, if it even matters anymore." He sighed. "We're well enough rested to go on, and if we haven't already had any great ideas then waiting longer won't help. Let's just get this over with." He got up and started stretching, shortly followed by Utau.
Amu looked helplessly between them. Ikuto was wrong; if they were in trouble, then fixing it was just as much her job as his. She couldn't just leave them to their own devices, not now that she felt she was starting to understand them.
As they started trekking up the stairs again, though, even focused effort didn't give her any grand ideas for fixing things.
———————
Fifteen minutes later."I've had - enough - of these motherfucking stairs - in this motherfucking stairwell."
"Language, Utau," Ikuto chided.
A tiny part of Amu's idolisation of Utau went crashing down.
———————
Ten minutes after that."And then she asked me to sing on that Sunday as well. Can you believe it? Three weeks in a row, and when I finally get a day off, all of a sudden there's some "Guerrilla live" I absolutely have to attend. Come to think of it, wasn't that one of the ones you crashed?"
"Back in February? Um… maybe." She'd done that a few too many times to remember all of them, but if it was one of the first - "Was that the one where the stage lights went crashing down?"
"No, that was the week after… wait. I remember that; they almost hit me head on." Utau glared at her. "I wouldn't have gotten away with just a scratch if they had. Were you trying to kill me?"
"Nonono." She frantically denied it, crossing her arms in front of her. "That was a total accident! I wasn't even up there, it was all -" Well, actually she was up there, as Su. It really was an accident, though. "But we didn't actually hit you, so that makes it okay, right?" Although she was almost certain it didn't.
"This tea doth be excellent," Ikuto stated in broken, archaic Japanese. They looked at him, then burst into giggles; he was sitting in seiza position, looking exceedingly uncomfortable while doing so.
"I… I'm sorry," she said. "Next time we stop I'll make the proper equipment for a tea ceremony, just for you. Utau-chan, you'll help me make it, right?"
Utau chuckled. "Of course I will. For my dear brother, I'll do anything."
Ikuto somehow managed to look even more uncomfortable after that statement.
———————
Too many stairs and too many minutes."Utau?"
"…"
"Ikuto?"
"Iru, please. They're tired," Amu said. Even she was starting to get a little tired, after she'd almost started to think that would never happen. Utau was barely hanging on, and for a while now she'd been carrying herself almost entirely without help from Ikuto.
Iru, Eru and Yoru were, of course, floating happily along without a care in the world. Well, Iru was badgering Eru a lot, but that was apparently how they got along. Amu dismissed any notion of it being a real concern; they'd both started as parts of Utau, so in a way, Eru and Iru not getting along would mean Utau wasn't getting along with herself. True, her own relationship with Ran and Miki was far more tranquil, but Iru badgered everyone. The girl was… a bottomless bundle of energy, frankly.
"Eruuu~" Iru wheedled, flying in tight circles around her sister, who was twisting around to avoid looking at her. "Eru, I'm bored! C'mon, let's play something… Yoru! Geez, leave those two, they'll be fine with Ikuto."
Case in point. Maybe also a little selfish; it was nice of Yoru to keep an eye on her sisters.
She'd be bored too, though, if she'd been slowly flying up somewhere like this for an hour straight. At least they were almost done, she could see the ceiling now.
On second glance, Eru was spending a lot of effort to avoid Iru's gaze, almost flipping upside down at times. Amu smiled lightly; she wasn't sure if Iru would agree, but it looked like they were already playing.
Sunday's Melancholy 15.1
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Sunday's Melancholy, 14:30
In a little-travelled corner of the National Diet Building, there is an elevator. It connects to a top-secret area that, while nominally under the authority of Japan's meteorological service, in actuality is the true heart of JPs. Naturally it is heavily secured, access controlled through both guards and centrally managed electronics.
In an alcove at the other end of the corridor, past a corner and hidden through obscurity more than security, there is a door. The only security on this door is a simple keycard-operated lock, which in keeping with basic safety guidelines only works in one direction.
If you opened this door you would find a staircase leading downwards, but the height of this staircase is such that anyone choosing to do so would need an hour to reach the bottom, and only a nearly superhuman constitution would allow them to return in less than two. Additionally it is covered in surveillance cameras set to trigger an alarm at the slightest hint of movement, so by the time you reach the bottom there would be a welcome committee waiting to escort you back out. The one time a Diet member's younger brother stole a keycard and made his way down, his state of utter exhaustion afterwards was considered to be punishment enough for youthful hijinks.
Right now the alarm was going off, but after a quick check with his superiors to make sure nothing untoward was happening, the guard responsible for manning the alarm system (Pvt. First class Hinata) hit the shutoff switch and went back to scanning his many other screens. He made a note to send help if they were still there once things calmed down, but didn't otherwise act; he knew the group of children couldn't possibly make it up in less than two or three, much less burdened with a casualty, and unfortunately things were far too chaotic at the moment to spare any attention for anyone who didn't need help at the moment. He knew there were adults down there who would have taken responsibility if they needed medical attention, even if he didn't know who, or why children might be in a top-secret area. It wasn't his job to know.
Hinata would later be chewed out for his lack of attention, though not severely. Nobody else could believe the speed with which Amu, Ikuto and Utau reached the surface either, and he had done a good job otherwise.
No-one was there waiting for them.
Amu, who even at this point was only a little tired, carefully sat her body down next to the heap before looking around. There was no-one in sight, but this was a short tributary corridor, not a thoroughfare.
"Ikuto? Utau? Do you want me to get you something?"
Utau mumbled a vague negation. She shook her head; their eyes were almost glazed over, but she guessed they'd be fine if given a few minutes to rest. Ikuto had pushed himself far too hard trying to help her, she thought.
"I'm going to go have a look outside, then. I want to make sure everything went well. I'll be back in a bit, okay?"
No response, and they'd both closed their eyes. Utau looked very cute cuddled up to Ikuto. Relaxed like this, she could really see the family resemblance; it made her wonder how she'd missed it earlier. Maybe because Utau dyed her hair? If she dyed her hair, that was. Neither looked quite pure-bred Japanese.
She hadn't wanted to leave her body behind, down there, but that was before climbing half a kilometre of stairs. It'd be fine for a little bit, right?
A few people gave her odd looks, but a young girl with green hair apparently wasn't strange enough to comment on - that, or they were having trouble seeing her. After a few times of almost being run down, she was starting to wonder if it might be the latter. She wasn't that short, was she?
Either way, she wasn't going to de-transform. She liked being able to understand what everyone was saying, even if it was all mixing into a general hubbub.
Well, a little crowding wouldn't stop her. Another few meters, then she'd be out the front door and -
"Amu?"
She twisted, feeling as if she'd been shocked. That was Dad's voice, coming from the side of the doorway, and Mom was standing right next to him!
Her face lit up and she took the last meters at a sprint, dodging random strangers with a fluid grace she hadn't known she had. Amu barrelled into Dad, hugging him around the waist hard enough to throw him back against the wall, and for a little while all was right with the world.
There was something she had to ask.
"Dad," she pensively said, revolving her neck to look upwards. "What happened? Did it work? I felt earthquakes, and… stuff." She wasn't sure how to explain Kagutsuchi. Definitely couldn't do it in one sentence.
Mom and Dad exchanged meaningful glances.
"That's hard to explain," he said. "You should probably see for yourself, but - hmm."
But what? What had happened?
There had been red light coming in through the doorway. She hadn't thought much of it, at the time.
Panic rising, she tore herself loose and forced her way through the crowd, easily outpacing Dad's clumsy attempt to follow her.
"Amu! Wait!"
He shouted at her, but she didn't - she couldn't obey. She had to see what had happened.
She worked her way through the crowd, searching until she found a relatively quiet spot. It was filled with barrels of gasoline that she used as an ad-hoc hill, giving her a good view of the goings-on.
For all she could tell, the Diet had become the mustering point for rescue efforts in central Tokyo. Outside it the plaza was full of soldiers, police and paramedics, all competently carrying out their individual jobs. They moved quickly, but in an unhurried manner; although she saw a triage unit close to the gate, most of the medics were chatting with each other rather than working. Everyone seemed too busy to worry about a single, strangely dressed child.
The area was well lit by floodlights and truck generators, but little else. The shadows they cast were sharp, dark and reddish… casting her gaze wider, she saw streetlights lighting up the streets - some flickering, a few broken - but most of the city she could see from here had gone dark. As she watched some of the power came back on, lights spreading across an entire section of the city.
An ambulance drove southwards past the front gate, sirens blaring. It was probably headed for the nearby Toranomon hospital.
Nothing she could see spoke of more than minor damage, the kind you might see after a nasty but not catastrophic earthquake. Even if all of Japan was like this, it'd take time to fix everything, but they could definitely do so. The only thing was… it was the middle of the day, so why…
She'd deliberately avoided looking up, afraid of what she'd see. Now that she did… she didn't understand it. She felt lost; this wasn't the world she knew.
"Amu!" Dad finally caught up to her, taking seconds to climb the barrels she'd simply jumped on top of. "I told you to wait -" His voice grew quiet as he saw the direction of her gaze. "Oh." He grabbed her shoulder, pulling her in against himself. Amu barely noticed.
The world had folded in on itself. In the distance, in one direction, instead of the horizon she saw the ground rising. The atmosphere was too hazy, and the light too dim to see any details, but she could see the overall shape of the terrain. Mountains, oceans, deserts. Straight ahead and looking like it was about to fall on them, the Sea of Japan, but above that… above that it gradually faded into a vast desert, looking like nothing that had ever existed on Earth. It was criss-crossed by streams of energy that she could easily see even from this distance, resembling nothing so much as a network of blood vessels. Faintly luminescent, they provided illumination almost like the original night sky.
In the middle of the world, passing from north-east to south-west was a vague, badly outlined bar of flickering reddish light. Every few seconds some spot burst into brilliant light and rippled outwards, outshining the "night sky" behind it for the half-minute the ripples lasted, but the light was left weaker than before afterwards and only slowly recovered.
The world had, to first appearances, become a cylinder. That wasn't true if you looked closer, not really; it only looked like a cylinder, and her eyes insisted it should be a cylinder, but careful inspection told her it wasn't one.
Straight ahead and above her she could see what looked like small mountains in the desert, variations in the terrain that gave her eyes something to latch on to. Following the curve of the world in either direction from there, southwards or northwards, the terrain features shrunk faster than they should have - there seemed to be more room than there should be, if this was a true cylinder. The same was true for the central bar of light, which thinned with distance far faster than she'd normally expect until it became a single, almost painfully bright thread of light. Eventually, looking down the open end of the cylinder, everything faded into a uniform red haze. She couldn't see far enough to tell how long it continued.
The geometry was all wrong. Like a saddle, some spark of her imagination said, but she didn't understand how that could apply to space. No, that wasn't true either; she did, or almost did, but her vague recollections of math (that she had never learned) and its applicability to this warped space (completely theoretical, all experiments illegal after the time of cascading years) didn't lend itself to any kind of intuition. Maybe Miki could have, she was the one who was actually smart, but Amu (Su) just felt the need for pen and paper. She needed to write the equations down, to see if they actually added up.
"You did good, you know." A familiar voice pulled her back to reality, along with Dad's hand ruffling her hair. She reflexively twisted, attempting to show the appearance of disliking it despite actually leaning into the caress, but once she realised what she was doing… she stopped, and instead very deliberately leaned in towards Dad. Things like that, trying to appear mature when she wasn't… it didn't seem very important right then. She'd much rather feel his reassurance.
"You did good," he repeated. "We're all fine, we'll get through this. You don't need to do anything else." He had an almost possessive grip on her shoulders.
She closed her eyes and finally, finally relaxed.
A/N: Don't relax too soon, Amu. You still have business to take care of.
[ ] Go back, get Utau and Ikuto to somewhere more comfortable than a random hallway.
[ ] Try to get back in your body, somehow.
[ ] Check up on your other friends.
[ ] Anything else?
In a little-travelled corner of the National Diet Building, there is an elevator. It connects to a top-secret area that, while nominally under the authority of Japan's meteorological service, in actuality is the true heart of JPs. Naturally it is heavily secured, access controlled through both guards and centrally managed electronics.
In an alcove at the other end of the corridor, past a corner and hidden through obscurity more than security, there is a door. The only security on this door is a simple keycard-operated lock, which in keeping with basic safety guidelines only works in one direction.
If you opened this door you would find a staircase leading downwards, but the height of this staircase is such that anyone choosing to do so would need an hour to reach the bottom, and only a nearly superhuman constitution would allow them to return in less than two. Additionally it is covered in surveillance cameras set to trigger an alarm at the slightest hint of movement, so by the time you reach the bottom there would be a welcome committee waiting to escort you back out. The one time a Diet member's younger brother stole a keycard and made his way down, his state of utter exhaustion afterwards was considered to be punishment enough for youthful hijinks.
Right now the alarm was going off, but after a quick check with his superiors to make sure nothing untoward was happening, the guard responsible for manning the alarm system (Pvt. First class Hinata) hit the shutoff switch and went back to scanning his many other screens. He made a note to send help if they were still there once things calmed down, but didn't otherwise act; he knew the group of children couldn't possibly make it up in less than two or three, much less burdened with a casualty, and unfortunately things were far too chaotic at the moment to spare any attention for anyone who didn't need help at the moment. He knew there were adults down there who would have taken responsibility if they needed medical attention, even if he didn't know who, or why children might be in a top-secret area. It wasn't his job to know.
Hinata would later be chewed out for his lack of attention, though not severely. Nobody else could believe the speed with which Amu, Ikuto and Utau reached the surface either, and he had done a good job otherwise.
———————
Ikuto and Utau emerged from the stairwell into an empty corridor, staggered a few more meters, then basically collapsed in a heap with their charas. Even Iru was tired from repeated chara changes, it seemed.No-one was there waiting for them.
Amu, who even at this point was only a little tired, carefully sat her body down next to the heap before looking around. There was no-one in sight, but this was a short tributary corridor, not a thoroughfare.
"Ikuto? Utau? Do you want me to get you something?"
Utau mumbled a vague negation. She shook her head; their eyes were almost glazed over, but she guessed they'd be fine if given a few minutes to rest. Ikuto had pushed himself far too hard trying to help her, she thought.
"I'm going to go have a look outside, then. I want to make sure everything went well. I'll be back in a bit, okay?"
No response, and they'd both closed their eyes. Utau looked very cute cuddled up to Ikuto. Relaxed like this, she could really see the family resemblance; it made her wonder how she'd missed it earlier. Maybe because Utau dyed her hair? If she dyed her hair, that was. Neither looked quite pure-bred Japanese.
She hadn't wanted to leave her body behind, down there, but that was before climbing half a kilometre of stairs. It'd be fine for a little bit, right?
———————
The building was far more crowded than before, almost to the point where it was becoming hard to get around. Military, civilians, a few policemen… she even recognised some of the older civilians from TV, somewhere. She couldn't remember exactly where she'd seen them, but she'd definitely seen them before. To make things worse, very few were leaving the building; they were all going back and forth between other wings, and a few were entering.A few people gave her odd looks, but a young girl with green hair apparently wasn't strange enough to comment on - that, or they were having trouble seeing her. After a few times of almost being run down, she was starting to wonder if it might be the latter. She wasn't that short, was she?
Either way, she wasn't going to de-transform. She liked being able to understand what everyone was saying, even if it was all mixing into a general hubbub.
Well, a little crowding wouldn't stop her. Another few meters, then she'd be out the front door and -
"Amu?"
She twisted, feeling as if she'd been shocked. That was Dad's voice, coming from the side of the doorway, and Mom was standing right next to him!
Her face lit up and she took the last meters at a sprint, dodging random strangers with a fluid grace she hadn't known she had. Amu barrelled into Dad, hugging him around the waist hard enough to throw him back against the wall, and for a little while all was right with the world.
There was something she had to ask.
"Dad," she pensively said, revolving her neck to look upwards. "What happened? Did it work? I felt earthquakes, and… stuff." She wasn't sure how to explain Kagutsuchi. Definitely couldn't do it in one sentence.
Mom and Dad exchanged meaningful glances.
"That's hard to explain," he said. "You should probably see for yourself, but - hmm."
But what? What had happened?
There had been red light coming in through the doorway. She hadn't thought much of it, at the time.
Panic rising, she tore herself loose and forced her way through the crowd, easily outpacing Dad's clumsy attempt to follow her.
"Amu! Wait!"
He shouted at her, but she didn't - she couldn't obey. She had to see what had happened.
———————
The plaza outside the Diet building was no less crowded than the inside. More so, if anything, if you ignored the large zones that had been cleared for vehicles.She worked her way through the crowd, searching until she found a relatively quiet spot. It was filled with barrels of gasoline that she used as an ad-hoc hill, giving her a good view of the goings-on.
For all she could tell, the Diet had become the mustering point for rescue efforts in central Tokyo. Outside it the plaza was full of soldiers, police and paramedics, all competently carrying out their individual jobs. They moved quickly, but in an unhurried manner; although she saw a triage unit close to the gate, most of the medics were chatting with each other rather than working. Everyone seemed too busy to worry about a single, strangely dressed child.
The area was well lit by floodlights and truck generators, but little else. The shadows they cast were sharp, dark and reddish… casting her gaze wider, she saw streetlights lighting up the streets - some flickering, a few broken - but most of the city she could see from here had gone dark. As she watched some of the power came back on, lights spreading across an entire section of the city.
An ambulance drove southwards past the front gate, sirens blaring. It was probably headed for the nearby Toranomon hospital.
Nothing she could see spoke of more than minor damage, the kind you might see after a nasty but not catastrophic earthquake. Even if all of Japan was like this, it'd take time to fix everything, but they could definitely do so. The only thing was… it was the middle of the day, so why…
She'd deliberately avoided looking up, afraid of what she'd see. Now that she did… she didn't understand it. She felt lost; this wasn't the world she knew.
"Amu!" Dad finally caught up to her, taking seconds to climb the barrels she'd simply jumped on top of. "I told you to wait -" His voice grew quiet as he saw the direction of her gaze. "Oh." He grabbed her shoulder, pulling her in against himself. Amu barely noticed.
The world had folded in on itself. In the distance, in one direction, instead of the horizon she saw the ground rising. The atmosphere was too hazy, and the light too dim to see any details, but she could see the overall shape of the terrain. Mountains, oceans, deserts. Straight ahead and looking like it was about to fall on them, the Sea of Japan, but above that… above that it gradually faded into a vast desert, looking like nothing that had ever existed on Earth. It was criss-crossed by streams of energy that she could easily see even from this distance, resembling nothing so much as a network of blood vessels. Faintly luminescent, they provided illumination almost like the original night sky.
In the middle of the world, passing from north-east to south-west was a vague, badly outlined bar of flickering reddish light. Every few seconds some spot burst into brilliant light and rippled outwards, outshining the "night sky" behind it for the half-minute the ripples lasted, but the light was left weaker than before afterwards and only slowly recovered.
The world had, to first appearances, become a cylinder. That wasn't true if you looked closer, not really; it only looked like a cylinder, and her eyes insisted it should be a cylinder, but careful inspection told her it wasn't one.
Straight ahead and above her she could see what looked like small mountains in the desert, variations in the terrain that gave her eyes something to latch on to. Following the curve of the world in either direction from there, southwards or northwards, the terrain features shrunk faster than they should have - there seemed to be more room than there should be, if this was a true cylinder. The same was true for the central bar of light, which thinned with distance far faster than she'd normally expect until it became a single, almost painfully bright thread of light. Eventually, looking down the open end of the cylinder, everything faded into a uniform red haze. She couldn't see far enough to tell how long it continued.
The geometry was all wrong. Like a saddle, some spark of her imagination said, but she didn't understand how that could apply to space. No, that wasn't true either; she did, or almost did, but her vague recollections of math (that she had never learned) and its applicability to this warped space (completely theoretical, all experiments illegal after the time of cascading years) didn't lend itself to any kind of intuition. Maybe Miki could have, she was the one who was actually smart, but Amu (Su) just felt the need for pen and paper. She needed to write the equations down, to see if they actually added up.
"You did good, you know." A familiar voice pulled her back to reality, along with Dad's hand ruffling her hair. She reflexively twisted, attempting to show the appearance of disliking it despite actually leaning into the caress, but once she realised what she was doing… she stopped, and instead very deliberately leaned in towards Dad. Things like that, trying to appear mature when she wasn't… it didn't seem very important right then. She'd much rather feel his reassurance.
"You did good," he repeated. "We're all fine, we'll get through this. You don't need to do anything else." He had an almost possessive grip on her shoulders.
She closed her eyes and finally, finally relaxed.
A/N: Don't relax too soon, Amu. You still have business to take care of.
[ ] Go back, get Utau and Ikuto to somewhere more comfortable than a random hallway.
[ ] Try to get back in your body, somehow.
[ ] Check up on your other friends.
[ ] Anything else?
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
[x] Ask your parents where your other friends ended up, and move Ikuto and Utau to where they are.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
[X] Try to get back in your body, somehow.
SCIENCE! But we really should get back into our body asap.
SCIENCE! But we really should get back into our body asap.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Its in a side-passage with only the Charas and Ikuto and Utau right now. Unless our family would follow us... meh.veekie said:
[x] Ask your parents where your other friends ended up, and move Ikuto and Utau to where they are.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
[X] Try to get back in your body, somehow.
Hyacinthium
Writing about sad cannibals as we speak.
- Location
- Bedroom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Ask your parents where your other friends ended up, and move Ikuto and Utau to where they are.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
[x] Ask your parents where your other friends ended up, and move Ikuto and Utau to where they are.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
[x] Find an authority figure and pass along Fumi's request, running out of fuel would be... bad. I mean, you don't think they'd forget, but better safe than sorry.
[x] Take a moment and check to see how tired you are, you're going to want to separate from Su while you still have the energy to do so; not being able to talk would suck, but it's better than the alternative.
-[x] If there's no pressing business once the above is done, break transformation with Su even if you have energy left and try to transform with your other body.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I was about to call the vote, because it looks like you're converging on a course of action, but~ I don't expect I'll be able to write anything tonight.
You do seem to have covered anything that needs doing in the near term, though. Good work remembering Fumi's request - you're right, of course, that there are other people whose job it is to remember this, but appearing reliable has its benefits.
EDIT:
On a side-note, from a branch of time that didn't happen: If you'd chosen to take the elevator, you would have been fine. With a dice pool of 8 dice, 13 if you had spun it as not exhausting Utau and Ikuto, Amu was not going to break anything. For comparison, a typical elevator repairman would throw 3 or 4 dice at a problem like that. He'd also get an automatic success for having the plans on hand, preventing botches, but Amu wasn't very likely to get no successes - and as previously stated, I don't throw dice. I may tweak the probabilities a bit, but the edges are effectively eliminated.
Climbing the stairs gave you a chance to bond, though. It's not a bad thing; shared adversity always seems to work out that way, even if the "adversity" in question was a giant stair. Downsides include... time passing, mainly.
(Unless you don't feel like helping out Ikuto and Utau next time they need it, in which case too bad. You're playing Amu.
)
You do seem to have covered anything that needs doing in the near term, though. Good work remembering Fumi's request - you're right, of course, that there are other people whose job it is to remember this, but appearing reliable has its benefits.
EDIT:
On a side-note, from a branch of time that didn't happen: If you'd chosen to take the elevator, you would have been fine. With a dice pool of 8 dice, 13 if you had spun it as not exhausting Utau and Ikuto, Amu was not going to break anything. For comparison, a typical elevator repairman would throw 3 or 4 dice at a problem like that. He'd also get an automatic success for having the plans on hand, preventing botches, but Amu wasn't very likely to get no successes - and as previously stated, I don't throw dice. I may tweak the probabilities a bit, but the edges are effectively eliminated.
Climbing the stairs gave you a chance to bond, though. It's not a bad thing; shared adversity always seems to work out that way, even if the "adversity" in question was a giant stair. Downsides include... time passing, mainly.
(Unless you don't feel like helping out Ikuto and Utau next time they need it, in which case too bad. You're playing Amu.
)