logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

characters: everyone.
location: the path from downtown beacon to the harbor; all over town.
date/time: february 16-21.
content: the forest spirits send off their friends to join the aurora. memory opals drop from the eerie green lights above.
warnings: n/a.

i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.

For most of the day on February 16, all of the town's forest spirits can be found along the stretch of road between downtown and the harbor, clearly setting up for, uh, something. They're piling snow onto the pathway, creating a miles long sled trail that starts outside the Landmark Inn and ends at the very end of the harbor's dock. Not only that, but the forest spirits are also not super willing to explain what they're up to! They're busy, you lantern-havers.

By the time evening rolls around, the spirits have set up wooden railings alongside the snowy path, as well as a warming tent, hot chocolate booth, and announcer stand outside of the Landmark. Oh, and a starting banner for the race! It's dogsled time!

Throughout the event, Beacon's downtown and harbor areas will be completely overrun with forest spirits, all there to bear witness to this holiday celebration—this holiday is for them, though, not you weirdos with your naked faces. Point is, none of the spirits will be hostile at this time! They're more interested in interacting with each other than with Beacon's residents, though if pressed, a kind spirit might be willing to explain what's going on:

The aurora arrives in Beacon for about a week each year, and the forest spirits believe it to be "friends in the sky". The lights are old friends of theirs, it seems! And each night while the aurora shines above the town, the forest spirits send off a handful of friends to join the aurora! The spirits ready to join the aurora build sleds of their own and assemble mighty sled teams, sometimes comprised of dog spirits and sometimes... other stuff. Then, when the aurora is at its peak in the wee hours of the night, the sled teams will ride off one by one, racing down the snow-covered path all the way down to the harbor, where they'll finally rocket off the dock and out over the lake, picking up more and more speed as each team gallops wildly over the water before arcing up into the sky. Once the spirits are barely a speck, they'll hit the aurora and burst into a shower of light. Beautiful stuff!

See, since the aurora is made of light, forest spirits launched into it are killed on impact! Isn't that wonderful! The forest spirits seem to think so! What is death to a dead thing!

All of this information can be learned through handwaved/played-led interactions with the forest spirits during the event. They'll all be focused on saying goodbye to their friends and cheering them on as they stream through the sky, but they're happy to welcome lantern-havers to join in the celebrations. The hot chocolate is free and only tastes a little bit like mud, so. Enjoy!

•••
For the entire duration of the event, the aurora will dance in beautiful silence overhead, lighting up the whole town with its eerie green glow. Every so often, handfuls of opals will rain down like meteorites from the lights above, and these opals each contain the memory of someone currently in Beacon! They can be found all over town, landing on paths and atop buildings and maybe even rocketing straight through your ceiling to crash into your living room. Perhaps a forest spirit decided to hide some shiny rocks in your cereal box or under your pillow... Better hope the Postmaster General doesn't find your opals before you do, though. That spirits sure does love their rocks. Point is, who knows where the opals might turn up?

On that note, if you signed up for a random event, we'll be RNGing characters to receive these random events throughout the event! The event may happen in response to a toplevel on this event log, or we might turn up in your IC inbox... 👀 These events will be entirely random, meaning we could dole out any number of them at any time, so it'll be a fun surprise for all of us.

If you missed signups and would still like to toss your name in the ring, go right ahead! Signups will remain open throughout the event, though we can't promise everyone who signs up will get something.

And finally... Each day, we'll post a list of the forest spirits joining the aurora! What, did you want to know in advance? The forest spirits have never been a particularly organized bunch, so they're winging this—which means more surprises for you. :)

Enjoy the races and the lights and the opals, residents of Beacon, and remember: WHAT IS DEATH TO A DEAD THING!

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3. All that I love has turned to fuel for the fire.

There's a crash, a shattering, as medical supplies, glass dishes and metal instruments, all hit the floor at once. A second after, Rosinante hurls the entire wheeled metal table in the same direction, blocking the two doctors from leaving the examination room. One is screaming for security, the other is clutching his bleeding nose, face swelling and turning purple around the site of the injury which matches the sting in Rosinante's fist.

These two, like others, will pay.

His rage is blinding. Law has already bolted; he's seen this enough and knows how to escape. Rosinante isn't worried about him in that sense. He's worried, instead, about him hearing all of the hateful things the doctors said - here, too after so many others. Is there not a single hospital in the entire goddamed North Blue that has a shred of compassion for a dying boy? They cry about extermination and white monsters and can't see past their own fear and hate long enough to even consider helping and the last of his faith in medicine may just have finally eroded. What good is a nurse who won't examine a patient? A doctor who won't even discuss options for alleviating pain?

Footsteps down the hall mean this hospital was ready. They had heard the other reports and had armed police in town on call just in case. No time to go searching through hospital records for anything that might help, no point interrogating other doctors. Rosinante powers down the long hallway and rounds the corner, making sure no militia is going to sink lead into him today.

Nothing here is worth saving. None of these people are living up to the oaths they swore. If they want a hospital, they'll have to build a new one, and if some of them get caught in the blast or the collapse, oh well. An entire country of innocent people was wiped off the map due to fear and hatred and judgment so why not add a few of those assholes to the piles of bodies this world is responsible for?

Never mind hospitals. If this town wants doctors, they'd better get new ones of those, too.

He came prepared this time. The grenades are clipped to his belt and had been hidden under his coat. He goes silent just to make it harder for the town's little army to follow what's happening as one by one he tosses the three explosives into alternating rooms in the center of the administrative wing.

Not the patients. Never the patients. He's not that blind.

He has about ten seconds. Out a window, down an entire floor with a leap to a balcony, then down another until he's at the ground and though he can't hear the grenades go off, he doesn't miss when a piece of masonry goes hurtling through the sky.

There's a flicker of white. Rosinante spots the boy and his fuzzy hat crouched behind a fountain in the hospital yard and scoops him up into his arms as he drops the silencing effect and gives it to Law instead so he can cry without being heard. Poor kid.

"Some day we'll find a cure. I promise."

For once it's sheer curiosity, rather than an intention to gather information, that has Cao Pi occasionally picking up opals to see what he can see. If he encounters one that belongs to someone he knows, he makes a point to pocket it and immediately seek out the owner. This time, even without catching glimpses of black feathers at the corners of the memory's sight, he knows upon seeing the skinny boy who this belongs to, and that he'll want it back. For a moment he stands there, silently taking in those images, and then he's off.

Zihuan seeks him out directly, making sure to find him where no one else can overhear, before Rosinante has a chance to find him in turn and ask after his memory. "Commander. I have something for you."

It is bitterly cold this time of year, even if they've had months to adapt to it. Seeking out opals buried in little craters in the snow is cold work and he's sheltered momentarily in one of the empty, unrestored buildings near the bonfire where he can watch the lights of the aurora dance through the gaping hole in the roof. Look, it still passes for shelter of some sort.

All the light makes movement far easier to spot to his dark-accustomed eyes, and he looks over his shoulder as the shadows shift to see Cao Pi in the doorway.

"What do you - oh."

An opal, surely. How kind of him to bring it, rather than leaving it where someone else might find it. Given the nature of some of the other things he's seen have gone, he's not sure he wants to relive the memory in front of someone, whatever it is, so he takes off his hat and holds it out so that the stone doesn't contact his skin.

With his free hand, though, he absolutely snaps his fingers and prevents any sound leaking out, just in case.

"What did you see?"

Smart man, holding out the hat for an offering. But then, it's his memory, he can see it if he wants. Cao Pi fingers it briefly, getting that flash of explosions behind his eyes, before plopping it in. "The child, again," he admits. "And some rather spectacular violence on your part. I was quite impressed with your passion."

His choice of words is rather deliberate; he hasn't seen so much raw, fiery emotion out of the man anywhere in Beacon. He knows that even the most gentle person can be pushed a step too far, so it's not as much a surprise as it is a relief that he, too, has it in him.

Okay, well. Now his curiosity - or more like a burning need to know what exactly was seen - has been piqued. He looks at the stone as if it might bite him, then braces himself and closes his hand around it.

Law, indeed, but only briefly. The rest of that memory is... unflattering, in his opinion. Cao Pi is being far too generous. He keeps the opal in his hat for now rather than showing where and how he's storing his own growing collection of these things.

"Impressed, huh? Not what I would've expected to hear."

"It was...a medical center of some kind?" His people have healers but not hospitals, field medics and country doctors who show up when needed, so it's not like Cao Pi has any frame of reference for how terrible it would be to firebomb one. Still. It's probably a bad thing, right? "It doesn't matter what it was."

He leans his shoulder on the rickety door frame and looks away, in profile to the bonfire beyond. "Men like us, who cannot show their true feelings to anyone..." Yep that's what he learned in that brief glimpse. He only guessed before, but now he knows. Men like us is not inaccurate. "...there will always be one thing to make us snap. I wondered what yours might be."

Maybe it doesn't matter what the building was, but he nods anyway. No need to elaborate beyond that, but he can at least confirm it as fact.

The rest of that is... interesting. The implication that they both have to put on an act of some sort is what he takes from it - that neither can show their true feelings for one reason or another. Cao Pi might be drawing too much of a parallel - trying to put him at ease by comparing them. It's a basic tactic, used in interrogation and in negotiation.

Maybe he doesn't need to analyze everything with such scrutiny.

"They wouldn't help him," he says, then shrugs as if in return, he simply couldn't help those doctors. They were beyond helping. Beyond any need for compassion, seeing as how they lacked it themselves.

"I suppose it's only fair I learn what makes you snap, then, hm? What is it that you can't tolerate?"

Sometimes an observation is just an observation, Rosinante.

Cao Pi smirks delicately. "Oh? You think I would be willing to volunteer that information at a time like this? Perhaps you should go and pick up a few opals, you might learn that more easily."

His flippancy is more than the usual act, today. After seeing the thing that stole his face, he's doing everything he can to forcefully hold it together by being even more snarky than usual. He directly flips everything around so as not to talk about himself. "Why wouldn't healers help a child? Unless you were simply too poor to hire them. I've heard that can be a thing."

He resists the snap of irritation that swells up in him at that remark, and ignores the question for the moment.

"I'm proposing a trade," he replies, keeping his tone even. "I'll answer that and more if you answer my question."

For so far, few stones have fallen. Cao Pi caught him too soon after this started for him to have found any of the emperor's own memories, and he's not convinced he will - the town is large, and the forest is dark and wide, though he'll surely be hunting hard after this encounter. And the anger he's left with after feeling anew, the hatred for those doctors and his sorrow for that poor, poor boy, is a feeling that's hard to shove entirely aside.

It's a fair answer, and, though he raises an eyebrow at the audacity of the demand, Cao Pi privately appreciates it fully. He huffs a small laugh and looks away again. "I would if I could. I know there are things that may bother me, but to truly lose my temper, well. I'm not sure I could name the scenario off the top of my head. It isn't that there isn't one, it's merely a fact that I don't know it until it happens."

His brow furrows, though. He did pretty much lose his shit when Fuuma sent a phantom of himself to try to assassinate his wife. So, in concession to the demand, he adds in a quiet murmur, "...but if I had to guess, it would have to do with someone threatening my wife."

"Then you do understand."

Important, he thinks, to establish that. To make sure Cao Pi keeps that connection in mind. What would he do if pressed to defend the person he loves? Is there any line he wouldn't cross?

Because Rosinante is pretty sure he found the answer to that himself in the months before arriving here. He'd thought himself perfectly capable of following orders, of doing as he was asked and more. A good soldier, and an ally of the common people, if not always necessarily a good person. There have always been lines he was willing to cross in order to preserve stability and justice, and sacrifices he was willing to make if it was in favor of a greater good, but there were also limits. He wouldn't have assaulted doctors and destroyed hospitals, wouldn't have lied to Sengoku, or given his own life for civilians in trouble.

"They wouldn't help him because they thought he was contagious. More than that, an abomination. In their eyes, he was his disease, not a kid who needed help. I expected better from people in their profession. They didn't deserve to keep acting as doctors if they wouldn't even do their goddamn jobs for him."

That hit home, evidenced by Zihuan's studious need to not meet Rosinante's eyes. The bonfire is far more interesting right now, it seems. Doing anything and everything to achieve a goal is one thing, but he has worked so hard to hide any stray expression of emotion that his rare flares of anger or fear are truly a loss of control. He's already crumbled once in the past week, thanks spirits, he's not going to do it again if he can help it.

He grunts an affirmation to the explanation. "I take it, it was nothing like that and they were ridiculously mistaken." There weren't a lot of direct details but he could read between the lines. "Superstitious fools, perhaps, or worse. I would hate to think of someone meant to heal the sick deliberately and maliciously ruining a young boy's life."

"They were afraid and they let their fear take over instead of using their heads. The disease couldn't be passed from person to person except from parents to children. Despite that, his people were murdered. Border unrest turned into genocide."

He had done as much reading up on it as Doflamingo had; though at night, to keep from showing his obvious interest in the story of the kid he supposedly hated. Some authors argued it was a complicated political issue that had no correct solution. That removing Flevance and its people was the only way to maintain stability in that corner of the sea. From Rosinante's point of view, it was purely driven by fear and greed. Shame he won't ever get to find out who in the Marines authorized their so-called peacekeeping force to go in and massacre women, children, doctors, and all the rest. He would have loved to give them a piece of his mind.

"I wouldn't say those doctors ruined his life, but they didn't make it any better. All they had to do was turn us away if they couldn't treat us. Instead, there were times like that one, where they called to have him put down like he was an animal." The sentence comes out with a growl of anger as he seethes over how they treated the kid. He was just thirteen! Just a boy, not a plagued rat.

Well, that's truly horrifying. From ruining one boy's life to genocide? Not that Cao Pi, of all people, has any kind of moral barrier against wiping out whole ahem villages or anything, but he can at least understand that boy, that's a hell of a leap over a disease. Yikes.

"But I've seen other parts of your memory," he notes, recalling the graves and the death-scenes. "He survived, at least, to a point. I hope the young man went on to thrive in spite of such fools. They do say the best revenge is a life well-lived in spite of one's enemies."

"He was alive last I saw him," Rosinante confirms, though it isn't strictly necessary. Cao Pi had indeed seen that in the first month. "And I hope he's well. I asked Pluto to search for his name in the newspapers from my world. She said she can search any point in time. I'm not expecting anything, though."

Law doesn't need to do anything newsworthy - and in fact it's probably best if he stays out of the public eye. But maybe he'll be recognized for some sort of miracle surgery, or for the building and operation of a good hospital. Something worth a note somewhere. Not every member of his mysterious clan has to be the center of destruction, after all.

"A life well-lived is all I want for him. I hope he gets to have it."

"Did you?" Oho, that's a nice nugget of an idea from Pluto. If information is as viable as trinkets and clothing, well, he just might have to broker a deal in a couple months. "I should be curious if she can actually follow through for you."

Sure, curious to find out what become of that kid, but mostly curious whether the market can actually fulfill that order. If so, bonus.

"I'll let you know," he says with a nod. He doesn't begrudge anyone the desire to learn about their loved ones' lives. And maybe, if it's a skill Pluto can refine and improve at since she hadn't sounded entirely certain - just maybe they can use it to retrieve information that will benefit their survival.

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

3. Hospitals (closed to Cao Pi)

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FIGHTS THIS TAG!

GO FIGHT WIN ! K O !!!

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