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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The lack of orders is nice, though at this point Soldat could probably actually resist following orders if they really didn't want to, especially from someone as non-threatening as Sora. They let Sora lead them aside, to the nearest low wall or, failing that, back to the Landmark where there's actual seating in the lobby. While they walk, they write out a better explanation, which they show once Sora's sitting down. Visiting some dark kind of world with a talking duck and dog and mouse. Robot-looking heartless and people talking about freeing hearts. There was human experimentation. Just had bad echoes.

Sora will lead them back to the Landmark and sit heavily on a chair in the lobby, not bothering to unbutton his coat in favor of looking at their next message, staring hard and thinking about it. So, not one he remembers specifically. That's... both comforting and unsettling. It could be anything, then.

A dark world? The duck and the dog are Donald and Goofy, of course, but if the king was also there... and robot looking Heartless? Human experimentation. Sora's fingers begin to clench, curling into his palms. It is my duty to expose what this darkness really is. I shall conduct the following experiments...

He shakes his head. Not now. Now's where Soldat is. Back then can take care of itself. "Talk to me about it." Sora thinks for a moment. "Where is it now? The stone." Either way, Soldat shouldn't have to look at it again.

Lucky for both of them, they don't have to. Soldat pulls it out of their pocket with the metal hand, wrapped still in that scrap of heavy fabric, to offer to Sora. He doesn't have to touch it yet, the fabric should shield him from absorbing it for now. Then they take the tablet back and start writing more.

Hollow Bastion. Started with guy with silver hair and the mouse disappearing. Then red hair and black robes came and told you Org 13 plan was to free hearts by killing heartless. Then silver came back and there was a fight with horned woman and robot and swaying heartless. Then you all went down into the town. It was dirty and kind of dark and clockwork-y. Scientists. Mouse came back, told you about the experiments. That's when I had memory malfunction and missed the rest.

Sora will gingerly take that opal, wrapping it securely and fitting it just so in a jacket pocket. He can't afford to let his fingers brush against it, not after what happened on Sunday. He'll take it up to Naminé later to make sure that it all gets in safely. No more overblown hiccups.

Sora peers at this description... Hollow Bastion. Okay. The description is actually of a memory he'd gotten back ages ago... It wasn't even, um, him? That was when Skyler was in control. Nothing seems to be setting off for him. He, unfortunately knows about all of this.

"Yeah." He laughs awkwardly. "I'm sorry your first impression of Hollow Bastion had to be like that." He clasps his hands together, looks at his shoes. "The people there had no idea what was happening. That the king and his apprentices were... doing that kind of stuff. One day, they were just living there, and then next the entire world was falling apart." The refugees who were lucky enough to slip into the right cracks of reality and land in Traverse Town had to wait years for someone to help them get back to their city. By the time Sora was able to fight his way through space and Heartless armies to get to the castle, the place was decrepit, unlivable. Just being there was asking to get consumed by swarms of Heartless.

He shakes his head. "They were working really hard to fix it up. Leon, Aerith, Cid... a girl who called herself a ninja." He still hasn't remembered her name. He'd like to. She seemed spunky, "They were trying to make the place better. I wish it'd been more about them."

By the time Sora gets through his explanation, Soldat makes another attempt at words, and something actually comes out! Huzzah! It sounds creaky and bitten-off, but it's still verbal words! "Not your fault. My own stupid brain."

At least someone apparently put a stop to it, in that world. That's good. Nobody stopped HYDRA. Nobody. Except.

The arm gives a noisy recalibration, plates rippling up and down twice, before they can break out of the threatening memory. Words. Come back, words, you can do it, it's okay. "So this one isn't new. For you. You remember the place."

Sora's still not entirely sure what to do when the recalibrations happen, but leading them outside their head has always been a good plan. And vocals are good! All he has to do is keep things light and make sure to give them space to keep trying to come back.

"Not a stupid brain. It's a good brain that's doing its best." It's the brain inside the soldier, and they don't need to change or get better for all of them to be good. Sora remembers. He believes it!

"Yeah. Bits and pieces." He leans back against the wall, thinking about it. "There were a few more people there... A girl in all black. Tall, really strong looking. She was looking for someone, almost took apart the room we were in with her bare hands trying to find him." He shakes his head, smiling, remembering how impressed and a little frightened he was at her strength. He really wished he remembered more about that girl. She seemed pretty cool.

"I can tell you more about the people I met there, if you want. Or we could talk about something else? I didn't even get to the part with the fairies." Said completely unironically. The fairies!

Sora, it is a stupid brain. It keeps throwing awful things at them and stopping up their words and breaking in new and exciting ways. Soldat gives him a look somewhere between exasperated and resigned, but doesn't waste limited words protesting. The arm settles again, the more Sora talks and they focus on him rather than said stupid brain. It's really just a stress response, a response to tension or strong emotion; there's not much Sora can do about except not try to touch it when the plates are moving, so his fingers don't get pinched.

"Fairies?" they repeat, encouraging him to elaborate. Tell them about fairies, Sora. That will be a lovely distraction from the inside of their own head, and they're pretty sure Sora can ramble for a good few minutes on that, giving their words a chance to recover further.

Nnnope, Sora's of the opinion that it's a perfectly good brain doing its best under bad circumstances! He gives Soldat an equally stubborn look - see, two can play at that game! - but he'll continue on about his fairies! He does like talking about them, after all.

"Uh-huh! Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. Three of em, all about the size... maybe from my fingers to my elbow?" He lifts his arm so they can look at the scale. "Little fairies with wings who could float and do magic. They called themselves the Gullwings! They were treasure hunters." He looks up and closes his eyes. Weirdly enough, he can remember quite a bit about them. "They were working for someone bad, I think, but then Donald scammed them into thinking that we had more treasure than whoever they were working for, so they started working for us. Fairies in my world only have room for one emotion at a time, and I think the only emotion they were working with was selfishness."

"They were a little mad when they found out that we didn't have much, so they were like, okay, that means we're taking everything you're holding right now! I guess that was fair, but boy, they had us sweating for a sec." He snorts, then laughs. "Turns out the feeling they had at the time was, like, mischief? We were a lot nicer than the person they were working for, and that person had lied to them too, so they figured that we were cooler anyway."

Sora rambles are great for calming down, it turns out, particularly the really ridiculous ones. By the end of that, Soldat can snort, too, looking vaguely amused rather than agitated. "Is that really what fairies are like? I always imagined them. Tall and beautiful and dangerous. Tricky and older than the hills." Their childhood stories about fairies (as Sora might recall from the memory of bedtime stories to two very young children) were really more along the lines of the otherworldly and alien fae folk of Ireland, since their pa told them, and he was clearly very Irish.

Sora thinks about that one for a second... then makes sort of a sound of both amusement and a little dismay. "You know that horned lady you saw? Her name's Maleficent. She's the kind of fairy you're probably thinking about." Ticks all the boxes, more or less.

"They came in all sizes, dunno why. I remember three who were only a little shorter than me. They gave me a new set of clothes one time? Man, that took ages. They kept arguing about what color everything should be. I was standing there for hours." He's annoyed and laughing at the same time. It took him a while to get fed up and tell them to just decide! Even Sora's got limits to his patience with people and their harmless whims, apparently.

"If you went to different worlds. Suppose different types of fairies makes sense," Soldat allows. Thankfully, Sleeping Beauty came out well after Soldat had started their tenure with HYDRA, so they never saw that movie.

Feeling steadier at last, they add, "Hope that memory helps fill some things in for you. I've had a lot of bad ones that still. Explained things."

Good! Pep talk acquired. Sora nods brightly! "Thanks! I dunno if it'll be all that bad, though. Remember when I was talking about how I got thrown onto another world and some people took me in and taught me how to fight?" Sora pats the pocket with the stone inside. "Same people. This is the first time I've ever gotten a chance to really learn about who they were."

It's... a little weird to miss people he's technically never met. It's hard to think about the idea that he's never really met them at all. It feels too real. He feels too grateful to them for saving his life for it to be a lie. But that's what it is, right? Just a story.

Spiraling. Redirecting. "Man, I can't wait to learn her name." He laughs. "Three years and I still haven't gotten her name back. The great ninja... someone. Man, she'd kick my butt if she knew that it took this long."

So it's probably only bad because Soldat has weird over-reactions regarding experimentation, scientists, and doctors. (Don't think I'd call it that weird, given the givens. No fucking doctors. Yeah, okay, you two, you have a point.) If it's enough to make the Asset say three words in a row, including one that wasn't actually necessary to get its point across, then that's a point worth agreeing with, too.

Soldat just lets Sora ramble. It seems easiest. It's usually easiest to just let Sora ramble, to be honest. They're probably about to the point where they'd better pick up their patrol again, but. In a minute. Sitting still where it's warm listening to the sounds of spirits in the kitchen and Sora chattering beside them is nice. For once, they don't even catch on to the moment of near-spiral.

"If she was your friend," they suggest, "she'd probably understand. And forgive you for not knowing yet." Ain't like she's here, anyway, but they're not tactless enough to say that.

Sora likes this, too. This is really easy. All he has to do is guide his brain to bits that don't feel like falling down into Davy Jones' locker. Fortunately, he has so many good memories that it's absurdly easy to avoid the bad. And it is indeed nice and warm, and he's planning on making friends with the kitchen spirits, and being in the now is just nice.

"You think?" Sora hums. "I want to hope so. I think it'd okay for her to be kind of disappointed, but if she wasn't too disappointed, then it'll be easier for us to be friends. I hope she'd want to be friends." He may not be the Sora she remembers, but he'd try to treat her the same, like he would with anyone else. (At least, he feels like he shouldn't occupy the same space that Sora did, even if it feels... good. Right. It's disrespectful. He has no right to his friendships. He's not entitled to feeling like they're his. They have to be like Naminé, right? Open to the idea.)

Right, no more stress. This conversation can transition to the walking portion of the day, now. Sora still isn't too bothered about missing the patrol, per se, but he does want to get to Beacon in time for dinner. Real or not, he wants to eat. "How are you feeling? Ready to go?"

"Yeah." Time to get moving, then. Soldat gives Sora's shoulder a little pat, then pushes back to their feet. They're a bit more focused on the actual patrol, as much because it's a Thing That Should Be Done as because of potential danger. Patrol is part of their schedule, and the schedule must be kept to. Brain trouble does not count as enough of an emergency to put that aside.

So once Sora is on his feet, too, they head back outside, hands tucked into their coat pockets. They comment, a little cautiously lest it bring about strong emotion, "You had a lot of friends, before."

Structure, huh. Structure is a thing that is sort of keeping the brain trouble away for Sora? Or perhaps they're both into the same thing, but for different reasons. It's easier not to think too hard when there's always something to do.

Nah, this isn't a strong emotion thing, unless that emotion is excitement. Sora's got a good grasp of his upstairs at this point, knows what does and doesn't feel good to talk about on that front. He doesn't know where they're driving at, but he trusts that he can at least take care of himself.

He'll get up too and follow them outside, nodding. "Lots and lots. All different kinds of worlds, all different kinds of friends. They're still right here, even though I don't remember everything about them." He pats his sternum, right over his heart. He takes this very seriously. "If I ever go back to Locke City, that's where they'll be."

Soldat nods slowly, once or twice. "How did you make them." That's a weird question, sounds all wrong. Rephrasing. "Why did they like you. You had so many. You must've been doing somethin' right when they all liked you." Soldat can understand why people might like Sora, he's friendly and supportive and emotionally open. But so many, and so varied. There has to be something to that.

They're thinking, weirdly, about the mechanics of friendship, which honestly Sora is either the best person to ask about, or the worst. Possibly both at once.

He is possibly the worst person to ask about friendmaking, if only because he doesn't see himself as a particularly special person when it comes to friendship? Even the question of why people like him has his ears red as he laughs, trying not to deflect or anything. He wants to help! But that's such a good question. How does he make friends?

"You know Donald and Goofy? The two friends I was always traveling around with?" Sora's mentioned at least Donald by name before. If they don't remember him from the memory, they may remember him from the time he told them and Misty about the person who taught him magic.

"When we first met, uh. Well, Goofy was always really nice and chill, he always wanted everyone to get along. But Donald and I drove each other up the wall. I didn't take him seriously and he never wanted to let me go looking for Riku and Kairi - the mission was always more important." In a way, Donald had scammed Sora into coming on the mission in the same way he scammed the Gullwings: by lying to him about being able to find his friends.

Sora's mouth pulls into a half smile. "Would you believe me if I told you that I didn't see the point of being friends with him? Or, um, anyone, actually?"

That earns him the most skeptical of skeptical looks Soldat has ever given anyone. "You. You, who want to be friends with the fucking Asset. You didn't see the point of making friends with anyone. What changed?" Because obviously something had to change. Per Soldat's observation, Sora wants to be friends with everyone and everything. To the point of stupidity, almost.

Sora snorts himself into a bark of laughter. Yes, up 'til and including the Asset. It's weird thinking about the person he was at age fourteen. If nothing else, that most certainly feels like it was decades ago. "I got the rug pulled out from under me, is what happened."

Sora shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and breathes steam out into the air. "Remember when I said the Keyblade can disappear or get stolen if your heart's weak?" Sora shrugs. "That's what happened to me. In Hollow Bastion, back when it was full of Heartless. Riku's the one who took it from me. Donald and Goofy... their mission was to follow the Keyblade until they found their king. So. They left me behind. Riku gave me a wooden sword and took off." And, uh, that's exactly what it sounds like. His best friend left him essentially unarmed in what amounted to a zombie-infested ruin to die.

He's still answering the question, by the way. He's leading up to something! Not that he's making that obvious. This kid's a rambler. "Sure, I had friends, but I didn't think they did much for me if they weren't actually there to help me out. I didn't really stop to think about who I was without them before that."

Edited 2020-02-27 08:47 (UTC)

Wait, what? Seriously, what? Soldat stops walking, looks in the direction of the museum, then back at Sora. And starts walking again, but still. Still. "Riku left you? Donald and Goofy left you?" They sound actually a little horrified, and a little indignant. Not even the Asset abandoned backup like that, without decent weaponry or a safehouse or something. Backup was to be protected, even if they were assholes.

Sora looks over at the museum too, just in case the soldier's spotted something, then looks back at them. Must be just looking out for the path. "Yeah." Sora would tell Soldat that Goofy almost immediately changed his mind when Riku decided he personally wanted Sora dead and Donald wasn't far behind... Unfortunately, the universe seems to want to keep that particular detail to itself. It's definitely contributing to Sora's overall funk. "If it makes you feel better, they both ended up coming back. And, uh, it hurt a lot at the time, but I think Riku ended up taking the whole thing even harder than... than I did."

Oof, rough territory. He shakes his head. Focus.

"Imagine me, fourteen, magic weapon, two friends who'd take me all around the universe on their space ship, chasing down my best friend who definitely was working for the bad guys, people telling me left and right that I'd be the one to fix everything." Sora smiles. It's been twenty years since then, long enough for him to look at his own hubris and laugh, even if it still kind of hurts. "It was scary, but the apocalypse was the first time anything happened to me, you know? Kinda had me feeling like I was something. Stupid."

"Recognizing their stupid mistake is better than not coming back at all," Soldat allows, still sounding indignant and not remotely mollified. "Fourteen is too young for that. Hell, eighteen is too young for that. Especially too young to fucking leave someone alone like that." It crosses their mind briefly to find Riku and give him a good lecture on how you treat your goddamn backup, let alone your friends, but that would probably upset Sora. So they reluctantly table the idea for later. Maybe.

"And you are something," they add in an annoyed mutter. "Jesus."

Sora slowly shakes his head. "That was the point, though. If I was something, I could've just... made it so Riku couldn't take it from me. I wasn't." He's still not, and it's hard for him to stop thinking about it. "I realized that the friends that got me all the way there were the reason why I was even still around. I was... kinda ungrateful before that, not gonna lie."

Did he eventually relax and have fun with his new friends? Yes. Did he learn that he liked talking to people and listening to their problems? Yes! Did he learn that optimism and hope in the face of impossible odds does actually matter? Oh, absolutely! Did he give his friends a single thought outside of the ways they made his life more interesting and fun? If they weren't Riku or Kairi, absolutely not.

"It made me realize that I wasn't really anyone special without them, and once I remembered that they all believed in me, and that I needed to care about that bond..." He mimes the Keyblade in his hand. "It came back."

He was just a teenager who wanted to go home with his friends and sleep in his own room knowing his mom would wake him up for school the next morning. Even now, that's who he is. It's just that he can't have that anymore. It isn't what he's learned and made of himself. It's just something he can't really escape, when it comes down to it. "So, that was how I learned what friendship was and how to make friends. The hard way."

That's what every teenager should be. Even the less fortunate teenagers shouldn't be out trying to save the world or abandoned on a planet full of Asset-like monsters or being made to think they're nothing without a fancy magic stick. Soldat is starting to think that not only is the universe Sora is from weird, but they don't actually like it much.

"Kid. Just because some magic stick likes you don't make you something. Just because the magic stick stops liking you don't mean you aren't something." They make an annoyed noise. "Fuck your friends, they ain't the be-all end-all of you. You're something just like you are, right now, whether they like you or not. Jesus, what are they teaching kids these days."

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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I finally get to use this icon

LOVE IT. the shakea shake icon

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