OOC for post 130.5: I apologize in advance. I blame everything on the Cerne Abbas giant and the long, long hours spent in front of Microsoft Excel.
OOC for post 131: Will post more later, since I'm not entirely sure whether the zombie is going to bother anyone during the festival or not.
Saifa, Okiku, the body/F, F, F
130.5: Divers Alarums +150PP
Happening in the timelapse before they reach Moswen in the dead forest.
"This is all very most like Alice in Wonderland," said the body happily. She was not hopping, because Saifa made threatening noises when she'd attempted to stay in character. Saifa had explained, in not very respectable language, translated to some extent by Okiku, that hopping was not to be done in such a place as the dead forest, as hopping might wake up things sleeping under the mossy ground, and it wasn't polite or practical to disturb them.
The comment having gone unnoticed by Ban and Marion, who were both trying their very best to avoid eye contact or any other kind of contact period, the body addressed Yakul, whom she was leading somewhat erratically by the bridle. (Marion, upon rising from her stupor, had given the body an imploring look, such that Ban had automatically passed the reins he had been holding to the body without needing to be asked.)
"'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. The character of Alice, in this case, may be replaced by anyone in our group, except me, that is, because I'm clearly already mad, like the Cheshire cat: do you not agree, Yakul?"
Yakul blinked helplessly at the body, who was grinning at it in a conspiratorial manner.
The body was feeling slightly off-balance. Very off-balance, it might be said. The spiritual resonance in the forest was insistent enough that although shades were repelled by the very real presence of an irate, glowering Saifa, the fact that all three souls and zombie were currently experiencing the supernatural equivalent of 3cc. shots of Brompton's cocktail, repeated liberally and with highly improper overdosage of morphine, was making itself overly apparent in times of communication.
Such as now.
"S'true though, that was a good show," the body continued, digging her elbow into the approximate location of one of Ban's ribs. "You can stop eyeballing me, I'm not gonna larf. Too bloody sloshed to."
"Sometimes if I concentrate really hard on holding my breath, when I'm turning purple and wanting CPR badly, I can actually forget that you're an insane zombie."
"Good thing I hit you in time, eh! That was a really big tonker! No telling what you were gonna do with it!"
"Tonker? What the- shutupshutupshutup!" The meaning of certain words is universal, even if the lingo is acutely regional.
The body gestured wildly with the umbrella, indicating the rough shape and size of an organ that would technically require to be attached to the common elephant. "They have mounds and mounds of chalk landscape dedicated to people with big tonkers in some places, I bet you'd get a whole cliff-"
"Can we start on a less personal topic, or even better, focus on the task at hand and move on in silence!"
"-and lots of ancient druidical graffiti saying "HE HAS GOT A GREAT BIG TONKER" and no mistake-"
"HOW DELIGHTFUL, MY VESSEL IS A NOT-SO-CLOSET FANCIER OF LARGE [dated expletive]S."
"Lady Saifa, my honoured mistress, perhaps now is not the time to-"
"SHUT UP, OKIKU, THAT'S A GOOD GIRL. AND ALL OF YOU SHUT UP TOO, MISBEGOTTEN WRETCHES, I AM IN DIRE NEED OF SOMETHING TO SMASH-"
"Yes, yes, listen to them, or at least resume this when we DON'T have a highly traumatized lady on a Caligrey behind us."
"D'you think it's probable that the size of the fantastical RPG male's tonker increases exponentially with the size of the sword? I don't mean to be voyeuristic or anything, but the sheer possibilities-"
Long-suffering Marion, mentally scarred for life, cuddled Karam and hung on to similarly long-suffering Yakul and tried to shut out the surrounding conversation.
"-okay okay enough about my great big ton- my personal issues, so WHERE the hell are we going now exactly Miss Zombie?"
"Well, if you must know, I have picked up a strand of the inimitable Madame Ebonique's soul-thread-bits and am indeed raveling it up most devotedly on a dandy invisible reel."
This seemed to elicit a reaction in both Ban and Marion, which the body did not fail to note despite prolonged bobbing upon the seas of phantomly inebriation.
The ensuing grin split the body's face nearly in two. She slapped Ban on the back and gave Marion's hand a cheerful squeeze. "No worries, I'm just going to deposit the two of you alone together with her beauteous self and see who else is around and bugger right off to save other people, leaving you two alone together with that charming young lady, might I mention again supposing you hadn't noticed and look here I am running out of adjectives sad as that may be that I will be leaving you people alone with that ravishing lupine female?"
Ban pinched the bridge of his nose, which had gone a rather telltale shade of red, as had his ears. Marion blushed, demurely.
"I understand perfectly, raging hormones and etcetera!"
"Don't you have hormones, too?"
"All dead, dear professor, dead as a doornail!"
Karam's next remark summed the situation up rather succinctly. "Uh-oh, Karam thinks there will be trouble!"
131: Samedi Nuit Mort. Prelude.
Happening in Kulun town proper from here on.
The thief cringed, and shrunk back against the wall. Right now it was feeling much friendlier than the apparition in front of him did. He knew it had been a bad idea to conduct regular business on the Day of the Dead, but the merchant had been so overtly careless, and the pouch that dangled in the man's hands was bulging, probably full of mananite, and he was very aware that the vengeful magenta creature with the flaming sword hovering over the other mothball-scented creature would shortly cause him to lose certain bits of his anatomy of varying importance...
They had a saying in Kulun that if you did any work on the Day that wasn't dedicated to the ghosts, the ghosts would catch up with you and make sure it was dedicated to them.
He'd thought that was just what it was, a saying...
A cold purple mist materialized somewhere about his ears and coalesced into the faint form of a young kimono-clad woman, holding a plate. A voice breathed into his ear, rather mournfully: "This humble servant would advise the briganding sir that it is not wise to disagree with Lady Saifa, or our mistress."
He tried to speak, but he couldn't seem to form the words.
The body leaned forward. The thief leaned back, but the solid bricks were there to stop him.
"That's right," she said affably, " so give us all your money... manananananite... swirly grey-green marble thingers and go away, that's a good fellow."
Saifa brandished her sword, threateningly. "ANY ARGUMENTS, PEASANT SCUM?"
Five minutes later the body was dividing the thief's takings amongst the three of them with a satisfied smile, the little balls of mananite making little clicking sounds as she counted them out in her palm. The intended victim of the robbery, a prosperous-looking merchant who up till then had been watching the developments, mouth open in a rictus of fascinated horror, blinked and dusted himself off.
Taking a step out of the narrow alleyway, he was halted by a bluish hand clapping itself on his shoulder.
"Oi, you. Not so fast."
The merchant turned around, and stared into white, kohl-rimmed oblivion.
"We're gonna remember you," grinned the body, increasing the hardness of her grip on the merchant's shoulder. "And you're gonna remember us. And you're gonna make a big altar, you are, and you're gonna label it like so: The Grievously Wronged Servant Okiku, The Great Ancestress Dowager-General Shaku Myou-ou Saifa open bracket bronze statue in the Suzunoha shrine close bracket, and Their Right Honourable Vessel, the Body. And this is what we want on the altar: your finest distilled white mountain peach brandy, sake, all kinds of wine the more potent the better; lots of confectionery, peppermints and fruit flavours are preferred, and I only like the stripey bull's-eye type, mind; pretty flowers too, chrysanthemums are best-"
Part of the merchant's consciousness, banging ineffectually on the doors of the rest of the merchant's consciousness, said: On the whole, robbery might have been a better fate...
*
As the sun went down the souls in the dead forest organized themselves, at first in rows and lines and then as the space ran out crammed themselves into any nook or cranny available. The wave swelled, bulged, spread out...
...it engulfed Kulun town, the individual souls spilling out from the tide like so many flecks of spray, falling upon the offerings and candles and incense. Ghosts mingled with people, some the barest wisps of ectoplasm darting between the milling crowds. Tonight was a night when every spectre could walk tall.
Not that they could be seen by anyone, but it was the principle that counted.
The body perched on the rooftop of the inn, as she was wont to do. She sucked on an ethereal peppermint, and listened to the music coming out of her headphones that only she could hear, and wondered where Moswen had kept all those dresses in her room when they had been traveling, at length putting it down to hammerspace, and RPG physics. She'd seen first Adalia, then Marion, then Dimitri rendezvous with the wolfish lady, though she'd had the manners to disable her preternatural hearing. Eavesdropping was a bad habit among comrades, she understood.
She could track each member of the party by keeping tabs on the fibers of their highly individual souls. She decided not to let on about this ability until it was absolutely necessary, since it might make some of the more privately minded ones uneasy should they find out that she knew exactly how long they took in the bathroom.
How troublesome the living were, now that she came to think of it...
She watched the town square light up like a christmas tree, and stood up.
She wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for, but she had the vague idea that a karaoke stand would be favourite.
Re: ~*~* Chronicles Of The Rift II *~*~ Starts {Full}
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