WEEK 2 MINGLE - ARTEMISIA

[foundationmods]

Things had changed so rapidly in the past few days.

The loss of two of them hung over like a shroud, made even worse by the fact that an innocent person had been executed.

Was this....how the rest of the game was going to go...?🗈

....Even if it was, there wasn't much they could do now. Yuuko herself hasn't shown up in public since the trial, and while some have talked to her, she's been...subdued.

Did the trial hurt her just as much as them?

Regardless, the island is still beautiful, if deadly. Summer continues, beaming down on all of them, the waves of the sea warm and inviting.

But even if things look bleak...

They have something in their hands that will soon lead to the Truth, and the heart of this matter.

And in the air...lies a heavy sense that everything is about to change.

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Comments

[anonnomnomnom]

[Both the expression and the eskimo burrito make him let out a brief peal of laughter. He does stop prodding for the moment, content enough to hang out there and watch.]

There were a few books like that, but this one was the only one in high school! Hey, are all high school girls like that? Are there a lot of them asking you to bite them for romance?

[I'm sorry Natsuno but we've entered this hell now.]

I'm surprised she was so hard to kill, though! Don't tell me she was already a jinrou, too.

[Do you know anyone who isn't a weird supernatural critter, dude.]

[sotoshini]

[ Running a hand through his hair half flustered, half irritably. ]

Only her, most people don't like me. [ Let him live his burrito Eskimo life in peace plz. Which is hard when nearly all of Sotoba wound up dead, turned, or insane. ]

She was a shiki. They're... more typical vampires like the ones in those books, I guess. They can't go in the sun, can't eat human food and have to drink blood to survive. They're pretty tenacious, but they enter a forced sleep at dawn so you can just kill 'em then. 

[anonnomnomnom]

[He's just grinning at him upside down as he fidgets, because it's funny to see Natsuno react to this particular topic. Such is the power of sudden tangents.]

Haha, there are a lot of people who don't like me, either! Maybe it's because they've never met someone or something like us before?

[Or maybe it's just because they can both be unnecessarily blunt about things, albeit in their own ways. Who knows. It is a mystery. The good news is that since Natsuno is a protag, he has first dibs.]

Speaking of which, I didn't even know there were all these different kinds of vampires. These shiki ones sound a lot more like the vampires in the books. But they're also kind of lame, aren't they?

[sotoshini]

I think it has to be the first one. I got told off for being like "this" even before I was a jinrou. [ He's just worse now. As for the latter, well he hasn't made a move to disengage from the conversation, so his opinion on that is probably clear enough. Even with the ribbing and the fading scowl on his face, he's still here. ]

They're basically failed jinrou which makes them inferior by default, so yeah.

[anonnomnomnom]

I've always gotten told off!

[He doesn't bother specifying what he was told off for, so it was probably just everything. It's not like he ever turned into anything unusual, after all. Probably?!

ITP Natsuno continues to make questionable life choices.]

Wow, I didn't even know that was something you could fail at, but I guess it might be a pretty dangerous process? What makes a good jinrou?

[sotoshini]

Then we're good company for each other.

[ Now you made him go and say it and his life choices are infinitely worse. ]

If you fail completely, you die. If you fail partially, you die but rise as an undead,a shiki. If you don't fail...you turn into a jinrou. Failing's not the right word [ It's just what Takumi called it, and he's never tried to explain this to anyone else. ] it's not like it's voluntary. If you get bit by an undead to the point of fatal exsanguination you wind up as one of the three. Supposedly it has to do with genetics and willpower, but the head undead didn't really know much more than anyone else.

[anonnomnomnom]

Sounds about right to me.

[He slithers back up onto the Epitaph. Gotta enjoy it while it's still there; his grin widens a little now that it's not upside down, bright and pleased as punch.]

So the ones like you are still pretty much a mystery, huh... Well, if it's a process where all the failures die off, I guess it would be pretty hard to test properly, especially with humans involved. [just super casually] There's something like it back home, but it involves Celestials, so they have a bit more room to mess around.

[sotoshini]

[ Only belatedly does he realize he might have said far too much, but moving on, moving on. ]

Mn, kind of. The head doctor in the village experimented on his own wife after she turned—he spent hours and hours poking and prodding at her with everything he had at hand. Insecticide, dissection, crainotomy... I heard it was a mess. [ Also very casually. ] Are celestials pretty durable?

[anonnomnomnom]

[Luckily for Natsuno, he probably won't get called out on it, if only because the other party is also moving on. It's fine, they got this. (They don't got this.)]

Wow. He must not have liked his wife very much at all. Did she end up dying, or was she just alive for the whole thing... Did they get a divorce??

[Does a divorce really even cover that anymore.]

For Celestials, it depends on their star level. I'm pretty sure only ten-star Celestials can rival the best Infernals in terms of durability. We're pretty much evenly matched at that point.

[sotoshini]

I think they had a loveless marriage but had to stay married because of village customs. [ Natsuno does not like to gossip but he can't help what he overhears, ok. ]

He killed her at the end, yeah. Ran like five stakes through her chest. But she was alive up until the last part.

So you guys are better then, by default.

[anonnomnomnom]

Wow, is that loveless or did he actually hate her? Village customs sure are a pain, aren't they...

[Somehow, he doesn't seem particularly surprised by the whole shebang. Natsuno's following assessment just makes him grin, cheeky.]

Of course we're better! And you know something? Most Celestials can't even reach ten stars, because we're the ones protecting the Celestial Beasts that let them do that.

[sotoshini]

They're the worst.

[ From one crappy situation to another. As much as he's missing a lot of context, talking about celestials and beasts is a much better topic. ]

...actual stars, or is it a ranking thing?

[anonnomnomnom]

[Funnily enough, they're not altogether unrelated topics. There's a faint irony in Anon's voice whenever he talks about Celestials, or Celestial Beasts, but that might just be the whole heaven and hell thing. That one's pretty easy to suss out.]

Mm, it's a ranking thing. Celestials are born with zero stars, and then it takes training and special tests for them to level up.

[He knows a little of the layman's terminology, at least.]

They have more weapons and better flexibility than Infernals, in theory. But of course, all of that ends if we can get our hands on one of 'em.

[sotoshini]

[ Nodding, that's easy enough to follow. Guess it's kinda like levels in karate or judo? That's what he's going to assume anyway. ]

You get their stars and weapons if you kill them?

[anonnomnomnom]

Hahaha, nothing that straightforward! Besides, that's just wasteful, especially if they're a higher-star Celestial.

[He curls up and sways downward over the slab and spreads his arms upside-down like he's about to make some dramatic revelation. In reality, his shit-eating grin looks pretty silly upside down. When is he going to get down from there.]

And that's because of our abilities. My clan... We're unusual even for Infernals, you know?

What do you think our biggest advantage is?

[sotoshini]

[ Watching this whole acrobatics display with a tinge of amusement. ]

Your boundless energy? [ Half a joke, half not cause points at Anon's general existence. ]

[anonnomnomnom]

Heheh, close!

[He is absolutely being silly now, but it's just fine -- he hasn't actually given that many hints in the first place. Anon stays in his ridiculous posture and slaps his own belly helpfully.]

Here. We can absorb Celestials and take everything from them. That goes for everyone else, too, but it mostly happens to the guys in the sky back home.

1/2

[sotoshini]

................

[ Don't mind him, he's just going to laugh a second. ]

[sotoshini]

[ 'Kay that's enough of that. As much as Natsuno doesn't want to believe it, it kinda all makes sense. ]

No wonder we get along. [ Shaking his head. ] So you get stronger after every enemy you beat. I guess you can't do that here, huh?

[anonnomnomnom]

Oh, is that why we get along?

[He seems to be phrasing that like a real question, a bright and amused one.]

I get stronger as long as I decide to keep 'em -- some of them aren't really worth keeping around, so I just spit them back out! Otherwise, well... [he gives his belly another casual pat] It's weird, but nothing can come out here -- but that doesn't mean what's in there is gone. I think I have... hmm, three or so things stored right now.

[Congrats on being backdatedly the first one who hasn't been pre-vored to learn about his power. ☆]

[sotoshini]

...one of the reasons. [ This sounds like a real answer too.

Ah but this is even stranger than he imagined it to be, somehow. Blinking a bit. ]

You forgot? [ Blink. ] And wait you just-what happens to them after?

[anonnomnomnom]

[He'll take that. Does he get some kind of reward for getting Natsuno to talk about feelings-adjacent things twice in one thread??

Anon just gives a casual upside-down shrug.]

I didn't forget, it's just been a little bit hectic around here, and besides one of them was a self-replicating SCP. I can contain it, but I have no idea how many cakes could be involved by now. [the cake dimension lives, somewhere in there.......] Once I spit them out, though, they just go on their way like nothing's happened.

No sense in being wasteful, like I said!

[sotoshini]

[ Yes. What that is though is a mystery™.

Long silence here. Natsuno's long since past the point of finding most things weird given his summer from hell and then the SCP. But this? This is really fucking weird. After several more seconds of trying to process what he just heard, he shakes his head and pulls the hood of his fluffy coat back. He can see better now, even if he still can't understand. ]

I-I'll have to see it.

[anonnomnomnom]

[The true man of mystery doesn't reveal his inner architecture even to himself.jpg.

Anon just crosses his arms and lounges through the silence, looking incrementally more amused all the time -- even if Natsuno's facial expression probably isn't showing much, he can totally sense the incredulity in the air. Also, he is considering it another win to unwrap the burrito, even if only a little.]

Haha, a picture is worth a thousand words? I can show you once we're out of here.

[You get the feeling this may be a dangerous offer.....]

[sotoshini]

[ Hearing something like this, even Natsuno can't manage to make his face completely impassive. ]

...sure. [ Shaking his head and mumbling. ] And I thought being able to smell corpses through several feet of concrete was weird.