logsinthenight | we jumpin! we poppin! we joppin!

Entry tags:

we jumpin! we poppin! we joppin!

characters: Sora, Mewtwo, Link, Carmilla, and you!
location: Various locations around Beacon and the Landmark hotel!
date/time: January 10, then 13-20-ish! Activity for the end of the blizzard, the yarn bomb, and a tiiiny bit through the Lights Off event (Sora will NOT be affected by the lantern effects in this post unless specifically requested! It's going to be one day of the illusion of normalcy :))
content: Sora continues to make friends! Get his hands dirty! Settle in at the Landmark! Stay busy so he doesn't think about things! (Will match tag format!)
warnings: Moderately low self-esteem and identity stuff, but nothing above a pg-13 rating!

[ A ]: Armory; Closed to Mewtwo

The soldier told him to leave the giant psychic cat alone, so he's going to! Seriously! He doesn't want to infringe on their space, especially if it's been through the same kind of life that the soldier has, so he's been dutifully going to the armory, going right down the steps, moving through the knife forms that the soldier had taught him followed by some unaided magic practice (because there's no telling if his cybernetics will always be there to help him aim), then leaving again without searching too much of the area. The routine has been good for him, helped him keep his mind off things.

But. He does hang back every so often to see if a giant fluffy tail suddenly whisks out of view. Or if an ear pops out from behind a display. Okay, so he doesn't want to disturb the cat, but he does still want to see if it would be open to being friends. He and the soldier started clicking pretty quickly, after all. He doesn't see why or how being a cat in a similar situation would make much of a difference.

So there he is, in the basement of the armory, going through the motions of the knife forms slowly, then quickly. He keeps messing it up, having to go back to the beginning of the drill. It's a bit annoying how he can't pick up things as easily as... others can, but he's doing his best. He's also not paying much attention to whoever might be around him, large cat or otherwise.

[ B ]: Miner's Castle #3, Bathroom; Closed to Link

After the meal on the 10th, he excuses himself to go use the bathroom. (Seriously, the soldier gets the bathroom all to themselves? To be honest, he has half a mind to make them share with him if only so their karma balances itself out.)

He opens up the bathroom door, all ready to go, when he stops dead. Uh. Those are certainly a lot of blankets in the tub. Did they adopt a pet? Wait, there aren't any animals in Beacon, are there? Is there someone else camping out here, besides Duster on the couch? Man, they really have a thing for strays, don't they?

Sora will furtively move forward, not wanting to disturb what's in the tub. Or who's in the tub. His bladder is forgotten by now; he just wants to know who this is.

[ C ]: Moving between Beacon's public library and the Landmark; Open

The walk between Beacon and the Landmark takes a few hours, but he figures that he's gotta walk it sometime if he's going to get moved into his new digs. So that's what he's doing! This is one of two trips he's taking between the two locations; on one, he's carrying a cot over his shoulder and a backpack, and during the second he's carrying just a backpack. Not much to carry if he's only been here a couple of weeks or so.

He already thinks he might regret the distance from so many of his new friends - the separation from Hana, the Librarian, and the inhabitants of Miner's Castle #3 is going to be the worst, he can already tell - but the promise of being able to become neighbors with some new friends, Rhys and Carmilla included, isn't a terrible exchange. You can't be too far from your friends if they're always in your heart, after all.

One will notice that he's not taking a bike during either of his trips. This is because he does not know that they exist. Oops.

It's a pretty long walk. It might be better with some company? Or at the very least, if there are two people on the road at the same time, it's kind of awkward to not at least say hello. Sora, at least, is very good at saying hello.

[ D ]: The Landmark; Closed to Carmilla, somewhat open

He wasn't sure who is living in the penthouse suite, but they went gone ahead and ordered chintzy decorations for their door - little balloons twisted into bats hovering over the copious lack of a welcome mat. He isn't really sure if they're supposed to like, have an aesthetic? But after he figures out that Carmilla's living there, he's decided that they're cute, no matter what their intended aesthetic was supposed to be.

So. He can fly, and he can jump up really high and float where he's hovering, and the concierge very kindly let him borrow a permanent marker as long as he promises to give it back (he will!). So there he is, hovering by the door of the penthouse suite, drawing a little fangy smile onto each and every balloon. Is this sabotage? Vandalism? Defacement of private property? Yes. Sora is living life on the edge.

[ E ]: The Invincible's Tavern; Open

Sora's got two things lined up in front of him as he sits at the bar at the tavern, ocarina up to his mouth as he busts out those spirit-communication blues; one is a line of orange slices on a plate with a few whole oranges sitting next to them for good measure, and the other is his tablet, open to the spirit communication guide Daylight posted a week ago.

He seems to be wanting to communicate something specific, in the spirits' language, to them, but every time he tries he gets the equivalent of sniffed at and ignored. After a moment, he puts down the ocarina and puts his chin down on the counter. He sighs deeply. He is SO put out.

"C'mon. It was one glass." Ignored. The spirits go on doing what they do; mixing drinks for other people. Mixing drinks for the people around him, actually. He turns to the nearest person in the room, looking distraught. "Am I doing something wrong? I don't know if it's the ocarina or if it's me."

[ F ]: The Invincible's kitchen; Open

This one's a pretty simple task, but there are a looot of moving parts to cabbage rolls, apparently, and Sora would like to get all of them right. He might be taking up an appreciable amount of kitchen space as he boils heads of cabbage and combines the filling. (The recipe is kosher! Always thinking of you, Midge Maisel.)

He either needs to get past you for something in the pantry - that is a whole seven or eight spices on this recipe, he's forgotten one for sure - or he is very, very obviously struggling with the "rolling up the rolls" step of the instructions. He's made twice as many leaves as the recipe requires because he knew that this step would be, hm, difficult! But he's bombed three of them so far and he's starting to look a bit frustrated. He thought he knew his own strength, but apparently not!

"Hey, are you any good at like..." He scrunches up his nose and makes a rolling gesture with his hands. "Rolling? Things? Can you help me?" Please tell him you have sushi roll experience or something. He is bamboozled.

[ G ]: Yarn Bombed locations; Open

Sora's been out all day, dashing around here and there to look for something extremely specific! He's been up trees and on top of buildings, basically a cartoon as he crawls all over the yarnbombed place to look for something, uh, extremely specific? He's already got a couple of things under his elbows - a few scarves, a hat, and a sweater - but there is one last thing that he needs. One last thing!

If you're here just to spectate, spectate away, If it's the end of the day, though, apparently you have it. Whatever it is is pink and blue, and Sora needs it. Sora will come up, full of hope, and say, without any preamble, "Hi! So, is there any way I could trade you for that?"

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Somnus, oranges are for eating! Sora is pretty sure he needs a demonstration. He's just gonna plop in a seat nearby and start peeling an orange himself. See? Easy.

"Cool is like - oooh. Okay, I've had to do this a couple of times here." Sora clears his throat. "It's a way of saying that something is acceptable, good quality, or of a confident and charming disposition." He looks extraordinarily serious... then cracks up at himself. "How's that? I had the Librarian help me out with that. Not bad, huh?"

This might end up taking a while. At last Somnus sinks into a seat beside Sora. Still he refuses to do more than appraise the orange in his grasp.

"You've come prepared." This place leaves him feeling deeply ignorant, but nobody has yet to hold it against him. "As for what I saw, I've seen nothing that you have not."

No special discovery in his recent memory comes to mind, anyway. Anything noteworthy for him seems commonplace to everyone else who's been here longer.

Sora shrugs a little! "Huh. I just got here this month, so I dunno about that. You coulda seen plenty of stuff I haven't yet - I've been busy."

Sora... is finally just gonna say it. He's had it. He is DONE, man. "Why do you keep looking at that orange like that?"

There are several answers he can give to that. He isn't hungry, and he hasn't partaken of oranges in a while. It's something to do while he sits there and talks. The mundane list goes on.

"I have no craving for food." He lowers the orange and faces Sora. "Busy with what?"

Sora... blinks. And then smiles a little at that, actually. He likes that answer.

"Hm. Whenever I go to a new world, I always try to make a lot of new friends? And I look around and help where I can. I've been learning to fight better, and I cook for myself every other day, and I go exploring, and I'm gonna start patrolling next week." Sora sticks an orange wedge in his mouth and begins to chew, but it's clear his eyes are still smiling. "I haven't been able to do anything like this in a while. It's been fun."

There's a lot of positivity in those words for someone who recently died. Exactly who is this boy, Somnus wonders, that he's been to multiple worlds? Even just the idea of there being other worlds in the first place is difficult enough for Somnus to process.

"Where have you explored?"

"I've been to..." Sora swallows, then puts up his fingers, counting. "Everything around the Bonfire Square? So, I've met Rastus and the Postmaster, and I've been up to the Invincible's kitchen to meet Midge for lunch, and I check on Hana in the cabin every day I can. I used to live in the library in the village, so I go down there a lot to visit the Librarian and help clean the library. I visit the gacha machine once a week! The other day, it gave me a really cool blanket. It's kind of like a burrito?"

The floodgates have been opened. Sora will continue on the incredibly long list of places he's been and people he's met unless he is interrupted somehow. Really, he's good with sudden questions! He knows he's a bit of a chatterbox.

What's a burrito? He wasn't kidding about making friends. The boy's made his rounds, and quite thoroughly at that. It's evident from the look of him that he isn't done, either. But first, Somnus has another question.

"What is the gacha machine?"

Its existence isn't foreign to him. He came across it somewhere in the texts that detail Beacon's recent history; however, the texts didn't much to tell him what it is or does.

A burrito is love wrapped in carbs. Sora pauses in the middle of his ramble, smiles enormously huge.

"I figured you wouldn't have those where you're from. It's a machine! If you put money in it, or like, anything nice and small and sorta flat, I think? It'll give you a riddle. If you get the riddle right, it'll give you a random prize!" Sora scrunches his nose. "It gave me a teddy bear with teeth once? It wasn't bad, though. Just kinda scary. I named him Vince McMahon."

He smiles so much for someone who's dead and won't be going to other worlds anymore. Somnus also doesn't know what a teddy bear is, but he'll go back to that later if the need to know consumes him.

"What else have you received?"

Death is certainly another adventure, as far as Sora's concerned. Whether the logic of that holds up or not is up to Somnus.

Back to the fingers again. It's like he can't count in his head or something! (He can't.) "There's the teddy bear and the blanket... And the weird Waffle House painting with the horse on it, and the Kool-Aid, and the camera. I guess the painting is kinda creepy too, but I'm gonna hang it up anyway." He wiggles his fingers for a second. "The gacha machine is also cool."

It does sound cool, and just a bit useless even with his limited understanding of everything that Sora has rattled off. A blanket has its use, but a painting isn't going to stop the World Eaters from coming.

Still, Somnus nods, then lapses into silence as a way of inviting Sora to resume his original list. A part of him is curious to learn about how another newcomer sees and interacts with this world. He knows that he was more reclusive than he should've been in the first two weeks following their arrival; Sora, however, seems to have made full use of that time.

Then Sora will continue on about his exploration of the community! He'll explain that he's already met a ton of new friends - the soldier, Misty, Aziraphale, Link, Daylight, and Jason are names that come out easily - and gone to their homes, and eaten meals with them, and that's why he's learning to cook better, by the way! He wants to pay them back! And he continues onto Javert's training sessions at the gym, and the mysterious giant cat in the armory with no name, and the girl named Angel in the rafters in the library who he only noticed because she'd scared the crap out of him one time when he was trying to go to sleep, and Midge in the kitchen of the Invincible...

And he'll pause there. "I mean, and that's just what's around here. Lots of people to meet. Everyone's been really cool." He tilts his head. "Well, everyone I've met so far. I think even the gacha machine might understand what we're saying. Be nice to the li'l guy if you ever try it out, okay?"

Busy. Sora has been exceptionally busy. It also says something about the size of their population that he only recognizes a few names from the bunch, and he's not acquainted with any of them.

"Is the machine another spirit?"

That's all there is here, as far as he can tell. Them, the spirits, and objects of an eerie nature like the doll sitting outside of the cabin into which he's been invited. After the scolding from that little girl, he finds himself questioning that which he ordinarily wouldn't.

Well, he's a pretty social guy! Not... usually this social, though? Kid loves himself some naps. He's just keeping busy. Very, very busy.

"You know, I want to think so?" At this point, he's eaten all of the slices he'd set out for the spirits and has demolished three quarters of another orange. If Somnus hasn't taken any, it's fine! Sora will very much eat them on his own. "Even if it doesn't, I like to think it does. It plays different songs if it feels sick, or happy, or sad. That's enough for me."

For Sora, 'that's all' wouldn't be a good descriptor for what he sees here in Beacon. It's more like, 'there are so many, and we have so little time.'

He's still playing with the same whole orange. Is he going to eat it anytime soon? That is a mystery. The privilege of finishing off the plate goes to Sora.

How does a machine feel si—never mind. Somnus has just one more question, and then he'll be done for the night.

"Knowing what you've learned, what are your thoughts about this world and our task to save it?"

Yeah, Sora's okay with the last answer Somnus gave. He can throw it in the trash, if he really wanted to? Sora would feel sad about the waste of fruit, but what he learned about this guy makes him feel happy enough. (Sora personally knows how to make the gacha machine sick. He doesn't intend on doing it again!)

Sora will pause in his snacking, though, and aim a look at his conversational partner, his strange keyhole shaped pupils focusing and refocusing like a cat's. "Whoa. That's a big question." He'll take a moment to split the orange halves into slices, because this is the kind of answer that he's pretty sure he's supposed to think about. "Is that something you've been thinking about a lot?"

That would absolutely be a waste and Somnus knows better than to go around throwing oranges willy-nilly. Flying onions were more than enough.

At any rate, Somnus delays in answering, lost as he is in Sora's eyes. Does the peculiar shape of those pupils affect sight at all? Just one of many questions that requires no answer. Mindful of the orange in his possession, he folds his arms.

"All of us are deceased. We exist here and now to fix this world."

Well, they don't affect anything going up and down, if that's what he's thinking. There are other things, though! Sora is not going to mention them. Hey, he's a cyborg, not a mindreader. He figures that if it's important, someone will point it out.

"'We exist here and now to fix this world.'" Sora quotes, puts a hand to his cheek. "Does that mean that, hm. Whatever we did before coming here wasn't important?"

"What we did when we were alive is irrelevant."

In death, they've been handed this task. It doesn't mean their affairs in life were unimportant. However, "Whether or not they were important is not for me to judge." Rather, their souls should have left their corpses behind and moved on to some unknown realm, yet here they are.

Sora nods, then nods again, shoving more orange in his mouth. The original question was what he thought of Beacon and what they were supposed to do here, right? Well. He has a lot of thoughts about all of that, but if he was to be very honest, none of it makes a lot of sense, even to himself.

"Then I can be the judge. I think it's all important." Sora shrugs. "I mean... Sure, Beacon's not my home, but I'm so far away from where I'm from, I'd might as well do something to solve problems here, then figure out how to get back, right?" Sora pauses, processing what he said a bit. He's... not really sure where home is for him, now that he thinks about it. What is home for an incomplete version of his preincarnation, anyway?

... One thing at a time. "Sure, how people judge you shouldn't depend on what people thought of you back home, but the life you lived still happened, right? I mean, that's how it feels for me." Sora stretches, popping noises going down his spine. "So, to say that the person you were back in your world doesn't matter suddenly? Doesn't make sense to me. If it didn't matter who were were, why wouldn't Beacon bring a bunch of people who were all the same and could make things happen faster because they agreed on everything? Wouldn't that make more sense?"

Can they go back? Once all of this is resolved—if they don't stumble into another reset, that is—will their souls return to their respective afterlives? Somnus dismisses the questions with a bow of his head.

More importantly, how are participants after each reset chosen? One instance failed, because of some like-minded belief that killing each other would lead to answers. Bickering is a waste of time, but he finds that a group of people who are the same poses equal danger.

"Matters of this scale require differences in opinion to achieve the ideal outcome. If we were all the same, even a small misstep could effect a considerable shift in course over time."

Like sailing, one degree off is all it takes. Better to have a crew that checks itself as equals. It isn't that the person he was in life doesn't matter anymore; experience is important, but that was then and this is now, and for him that's a significant transition around which to wrap his head.

Makes sense. Sora always kind of wondered about that. Thank you for explaining the disadvantages of instrumentality to him, Somnus.

"Okay, then that still means that us being different means something important here. And that means who we were in the past was important too. Like, I couldn't lead anything? I don't really have, you know, leader-y kind of instincts. People who did stuff like that in the past are important because they can tell me what to do. That's what makes who we were in the past important." Sora pauses, then peers into his new friend's face. "Unless you were talking about something different? Like... if we were good or back back where we were from? Or how important we were? Or if we came from a place that had everything to do with the darkness, or nothing?"

He once fancied himself a capable leader, but events surroundings his death and facts he learned afterward have cast doubt on that belief. Somnus would rather not talk about either of those things. Instead, he should like to make some sense of this otherwise nonsensical world.

"Do you?" He clarifies, "Hail from such a place."

Lunafreya spoke of the darkness in their world as if that should mean something to him. It doesn't, not with his limited knowledge. Others seem more in tune or homey with the idea than he. This boy, for one, rattles it off as a possibility like it's nothing.

"From a place that--?" Sora stares at his conversational partner for a second, truly stumped by this one. A smile appears on his face, followed by a wry, soft laugh. "A place that has something to do with the darkness. The way this one does, right?"

There are so many technicalities here that Sora doesn't actually know where to begin. It's such a simple question. Where is he from? "In another life, I guess? That's the right way to put it, right?" He bites the inside of his cheek, then picks up a piece of orange peel, begins to fidget with it. "I guess 'yes and no' would be the right answer, but if you've got questions about the darkness outside of the thing that happens when the lights go out, I've got answers. Might not be the right ones, though."

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