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?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

Another life, Somnus echoes inwardly as his gaze flits to the orange peel in Sora's hands. He wouldn't know if that's right. Surreal as it is to think (like the rest of Beacon), the boy claims to be a reincarnation with memories of a past life; combining experiences across lives, he could well be older than Somnus.

"I would hear them. What caused the darkness, and how did it affect your world?"

Please! Even if Sora has the equivalent of thirty years of memories in him, they're mostly of a childhood and adolescence lived twice over. If he's wise, it's the way Peter Pan is, which... well. Your mileage may vary. (Sora's cool with Peter Pan, but he's not sure if he'd actually like to be like him, either.)

Sora will look at him over his peel, then go back to fidgeting with it. "Before I answer that, can I ask why you keep asking questions about me?" He pauses, then smiles to himself, not trying for eye contact. "I mean, I like talking about my friends and my world and stuff, but usually this goes the other way around." He's usually the one listening to others. This has been quite an odd experience for him, and this is just one of the reasons why.

Don't be like Peter Pan, Sora.

The peel's not going to last long at this rate. "You have prior experience with that which plagues this world. Even if the darkness' origin differs, I wish to learn as much as I'm able." He has neither friends nor worldly experiences that pertain to the problem at hand to share. This boy who's lived more than one life has both, and Somnus is interested in the latter. The reason for all these questions is simple.

At this rate, if he reincarnates again, he'll have no choice. SIGH.

"I dunno if you've talked to people much just like this, but a lot of the time, people are really interested in talking about themselves. It's nice to be able to say, like, hey, I did something kinda like this a long time ago, or like, I've never done something like this because of this reason? It's how you connect." Sora leans back. "I guess I'm just curious if you've never talked to someone, you know, not officially before? Like as a friend."

Sora!!

If people are that interested in talking about themselves, why is the boy questioning this conversation? Fine. He'll say something, and it should explain away that question in the process.

"I was the commander of an army, all of whom I assembled and trained myself in order to suppress a plague."

Sora asks these questions because he's curious about other people! If he has to have two adolescences worth of relationships and conversations in him, he has to learn something from it all. This is what he chose to come away with: Listening always helps. And it goes both ways!

"A leader, huh... Sounds like I need a guy like you." He drops the peel, puts a hand to his cheek and rests against the table. Not really implying anything! Just a simple statement of fact. "And that's why you talk so officially. You've been a leader, so you have to make decisions for yourself and other people without help. That makes sense. Sounds lonely, though."

Lonely? That's to be expected. Even if he was a leader, though, he evidently didn't do well enough. Look where he is now, he thinks dourly.

"I did what I thought I had to do." Except he thought wrong, apparently. "But I had soldiers to carry out my orders. Here, it's just me. In order to restore this world, I would ally with you and the rest."

Sora nods along with this, thinking carefully. "To restore the world means there's a good chance we might all die again. I mean... That's what I want - uh, restoring the world, not dying again - but is that what you really want?"

Because that is what Sora wants, but when it comes down to it, he's not terribly sure if he'd have the nerve to really commit to it. And that's what he'd probably need a leader for! To decide.

"My duty has ever been to the people. I do not fear death."

He decided a long time ago that he'd lay his life down for his duty. An entire world, though—Beacon is rather small, so this and the fact that he's already dead are the two primary reasons he's able to even fathom the idea.

"If people are to prosper, the world's restoration takes precedence."

Sora will look at Somnus for a long second, then a half smile will crawl along his face. "I like that. Simple." He can do simple.

"So, uh, darkness." He shakes his head. "I need to start out by telling you that I've told someone else who's been here a while longer about this, and he said that this probably isn't the same darkness. Do you still want me to go on?" They can always talk about something else! If Somnus is on a schedule, Sora's not about to waste his time.

Simple is efficient. Cold, but efficient.

Somnus nods. Even if the knowledge he gains from this isn't applicable to this place, there's still something to be learned from the experiences of others. He motions for Sora to continue.

Sora nods back, then leans back in his chair. From his perspective, it all happened either three years ago or twenty years ago, and even then his knowledge is a little spotty.

"It's kind of the same as what's happening here? A long time ago, the stars in the sky started going out. They were worlds getting eaten by Heartless, a bunch of monsters made of darkness who would turn anything with a heart into another Heartless, and so on until they found the heart of the world and ate that Then its light would go out, and then the whole world falls apart after that. Poof." He shrugs. "I haven't gotten a really good look at the Worldeaters, but who knows? They could just be a kind of Heartless I haven't seen before. There are some things about the situation in Beacon that are different, though."

That sounds eerily similar to the future of his world. The exact details differ from what little he knows about matters back on Eos, but the similarities are there. He listens with his eyes on the orange in his possession, trying to imagine these creatures of the dark who feast on the very hearts of worlds.

How tragic. So many worlds and all those lives, lost. It's upsetting.

"Darkness can only be dispelled by Light. Did the worlds have no gods to bestow such powers unto the people?"

Those certainly sounded... capital letters-y. Sora won't point that out, though.

"Gods? I mean, I guess there were gods, but they didn't really have much to do with anything." Zeus was a nice guy, Hades wasn't, but they were just pieces in a bigger, grander scale sort of problem. "We have Keyblades, though, and people with strong hearts can use them to fight the darkness!" He pauses. "They're not all light, though. You can have a Keyblade and use it to spread darkness too."

And the gods are all right with that? What exactly constitutes a strong heart? Questions rise one after another in his mind, only for Somnus to push them aside. Those aren't important right now.

"The Heartless originate from people, then."

Darkness is spread by people. In a way, so was the Scourge. But it would be too disturbing to think that the Scourge was born from them. As for the darkness of which this boy speaks, it raises yet even more questions about what came first in the overall equation.

"Yup." Sora nods. "If you get turned into a Heartless, you can only come back if your heart and body can find their way back together again. Otherwise, you get lost in the darkness, trying to find lights to eat, and lights are in other people's hearts." And that's why Heartless find other people and eat their hearts. "It's scary. By the time my world fell, there were only a few worlds left, and I think all they were was lucky. There wasn't a way to, y'know, predict it. Unless you had a Keyblade, there wasn't really a way to stop it, either."

"Your world fell." He wonders if that moment marked the end of the boy's life, too. So it all boils down to luck? Somnus' frown deepens. Millions of lives, snuffed out like a feeble candlelight, all because they weren't lucky enough. "The Keyblade—how do wielders come by it?"

Well, no, he didn't die that day. But yes, eventually? And yes again? Not really, then yes, then - look, time travel can get real dicey, okay?

Sora looks at his fingers against the table for a moment. "Luck." He shrugs after a moment of thought. "I mean, you need a Keyblade around, and like... you need to hold onto it for a second to see if it passes on to you? Kind of like a cold." This is the least respectful way to describe a Keyblade ceremony ever, but if it fits! "So, you know, it's luck - not only do you need a Keyblade around, you need a heart strong enough for it to pass on to you. There used to be a lot of Keyblades and people to use them, but where I'm from, it came down to maybe eight? Nine? People in the entire universe. And they couldn't be everywhere at once. And not all of them were, like, good people."

we jumpin! we poppin! we joppin!

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