logsinthenight | we jumpin! we poppin! we joppin!

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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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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."

These mortal youngins and their penchant for time travel. He's never going to understand.

That entire process strikes him as wholly inefficient. No wonder their numbers are so few, though he doesn't doubt that something else is also responsible for diminishing said numbers in the first place. Considering the circumstances from which he hails, eight or nine people still sounds rather generous. That many for so many worlds, on the other hand—that sounds worse.

"What became of the universe?" Based on context, he can guess at the meaning. After his earlier curiosity regarding the boy's demise, it seems almost silly on the surface to ask this if he doesn't account for the fact that Sora's knowledge is quite vast.

Keeeyblade Waaaar. Not that Sora's ever been too clear on the details about that, but he does know that there was a large scale war, and that probably explains a whole lot of things.

Sora pauses. "You know. I think things might have been okay." He thinks about it for a moment, really hard. "Sorry, my memories from then are really scrambled? I don't know when things were supposed to begin or end." He closes his eyes. "I know we saved the worlds from the darkness the first time around. We had to... hm. Free their hearts." And that took a bit of doing that he doesn't think will fit the space of one conversation. "And all the hearts went back to where they were supposed to be. Some of them were still asleep, but most of them were fine. And then... things got bad again, but it wasn't because of the darkness. And then we fixed that. And then they got bad again. And then, after that..."

Sora opens his eyes. "I don't know what happened." He thinks he may have died again, but he isn't certain. His memories don't reach that far. He isn't even certain if that was where his entire universe got obliterated by the disaster that sent his soul to Locke City or if he'd done something to end things prematurely. He'd... broken quite a few things, he thinks. "But, um, anyway. The darkness was the first thing, and that was something we definitely fixed."

What a life.

It sounds as if the universe was constantly doomed. There's also far more than that meets the eye beyond those keyhole-shaped pupils where Sora is concerned. He's going to need to sit down elsewhere later and really think on all that he's been told.

"But keyblades will not restore this world," he says in the meantime. Otherwise, they'd all be wielder, even if their ideologies may differ. "What do you make of the World Eaters?"

A lot going on in this head? Nah. No thoughts, brain empty. Just a little happy and a little sad, same as everyone else.

Sora nods. It's what Rosinante says, and Sora's not one to doubt Rosinante's judgment. "I want to talk to them, if we can." He slowly shakes his head. "I mean, if they don't want to talk, then defeating them is the way to go, but like... I don't like the idea of at least trying to figure out if we can all get what we want." He pulls up a sleeve and begins picking at it, unraveling the edge. "I don't think there's anything wrong with the darkness. There's only so much people can handle, but that doesn't make the darkness bad. It's just... there." It's not its fault that it's like that. Nothing about the darkness immediately strikes Sora as a bad thing.

Sora makes a fair point. Darkness is merely another facet of nature, on the other side of which lies the light. Night and day exist as counterparts. Besides, it's the same with people as far as Somnus is concerned: they're all made up of beautiful and ugly parts both.

With regards to the World Eaters, however, they know too little that Somnus refrains from passing judgment either way. "Is there anyone here who shares that sentiment?" he asks, if only so he can know who's out there to discuss this pacifistic method.

Sora's of the same mind. Well, he does know a few people who don't have a dark side at all, but that's neither here nor there, and Kairi's really not the topic of the conversation. It's unlikely that she'll come up at all. He's really not sure how to come to terms with everything about her.

"Umm," Sora says, still unraveling his sleeve a bit, his eyes cast upward in thought. "You might wanna talk to Day about that?" Sora smiles and nods to himself. "Daylight - he's a big guy, looks like a robot, covered in red armor - he's really nice! He's studying the spirit language to see if we can make peace with them, and I think if the World Eaters speak the same language, Daylight would probably want to try to talk to them, too."

He thinks for a moment longer, though, and shakes his head. "Dunno if anyone else would be down. Most people seem to think you can't really talk to them." Sora doesn't know! They may be right.

"Daylight," he echoes. What's a robot? Big and red, though—he can work with that. Perhaps he's already seen this Daylight from the distance in passing. He'll only know for certain once he meets him.

If the World Eaters do, in fact, speak the same language as the spirits, so many doors can be opened. It's optimistic, especially when keeping in mind the multiple resets that have preceded their bunch, but they can't afford to dismiss any possibility off-hand.

"All options must be exhausted. I shall speak with him."

Sora laughs actually, abandoning his sleeve. Man, this guy doesn't really telegraph much, but Sora finds himself liking him anyway.

"You really do talk like Mr. Locke. I think he might've been more chill than you, though." He seems equally as fair, at least. "Wish you could've lived in my world, man. You'd have been a pretty cool math teacher."

He, a teacher. His brow furrows at the strange thought. But that's enough talk for this night, and thus he stands. "My thanks for the orange. Take care not to vex the spirits further."

At this point, the sudden exit does not throw Sora at all. He just lifts a hand, beginning to gather orange peels. "I'll give it a shot. Thanks. Later."

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we jumpin! we poppin! we joppin!

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