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]

Ah. That definitely doesn't sound like a summer cold, but sometimes humans are really good at making up stories for themselves to believe. You don't even have to try and cover anything up!

Was that when you got your powers?

[He's going to reach out and prod at the crinkle unless otherwise persuaded.]

[sotoshini]

Tell me about it. [ It sounds like there might be more to this story, but then his personal space is invaded. Surprisingly or not, he doesn't actually stop Anon, but he does give him a questioning look. "Why are you touching his coat?" goes unsaid. The coat continues to make strangely satisfying crinkling sounds. ]

Yeah, it was the hottest, humid summer. Fall couldn't have come soon enough. 

[anonnomnomnom]

[Are you trying to turn him into a cat batting at a shiny new toy because while there are only shades of it here there are definitely shades. He prods at it a little more, absently and without any explanation whatsoever.]

And I guess you didn't have the ocean, or any goat butlers to fan you with leaves or anything.

[There's something cheeky there, but he probably hasn't forced any goat butlers to fan him with leaves. For one, most of the leaves are still poisonous.]

[sotoshini]

[ ...sure, for now this random poking is acceptable. Despite how standoffish he is, there are also times when he's pretty tolerant of random, silly things. The memory this brings back is neither pleasant nor unwelcome so eh. This close, Anon can see that his eyes are red too—no violet today seems like. ]

None of those. But I'm sure that girl would have done it if I asked. 

[anonnomnomnom]

[Random and silly is essence of Anon a great deal of the time, so it's good that Natsuno is building up a tolerance! As for Anon, he's also starting to get used to the red-eyed thing. In many ways, it's more familiar than when things are violet.]

Eh? A girl?

[Does Natsuno have a fan club.]

[sotoshini]

Yeah. A stalker. [ He does and wish he didn't have one. Well. Had ]

[anonnomnomnom]

Oh! Was she going to your high school that you didn't go to? You know, like in that book in the library, what was it called...

Crepuscule?

[Yes, we're going there now.]

[sotoshini]

[ He's about to say he went to school because it was the only path out of Sotoba but. What. ]

...crepuscule?

[anonnomnomnom]

I realized that I don't know anything about vampires or werewolves or anything like that... so I went to do some research! The library has all kinds of great books on the subject. Well, I don't know if this was a great book. I couldn't tell if the guy or the girl was the stalker, and I think it was a romance so it got kind of boring?

So I skipped to the end to see if she got eaten, but that was disappointing too.

So, did you eat her? Or blow her up?

[sotoshini]

[ This book sounds awful. And so does eating Shimizu, he can't quite grimace enough to get his full disdain across. ]

Maybe that book is where she got all her crazy ideas. I'm sure she would loved for me to bite her and make her mine. [ Augh gross. Crossing his arms across his chest, he kinda looks like a disgruntled eskimo like this. ]

No, I lured her some place and let the humans take care of her. She got run over a few times before they finally staked her.

[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?