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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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."

Sora does jump a little at the "fuck your friends" thing, his heart taking a dip, but relaxes at the end of the explanation, a small smile pulling at his mouth.

He does understand all of this, but he sort of thinks that the innate worth he attributes to everyone doesn't apply in the same way to himself. It's hard having proof that he's built to break more easily than others, that he's more vulnerable to self-doubt and fear than those who are supposed to carry the Keyblade. Sure, he doesn't intend on wasting time by dwelling on his flaws, but that doesn't mean he's allowed to forget his weaknesses either. (And even if he did, his enemies are very keen on exploiting his weaknesses for all they're worth - he HAS to keep himself in check or else they'll get the better of him.)

He just has to be careful. If he wants to be good and help everyone, he has to be careful. Riku isn't going to rescue him anymore. It's just him and his incomplete heart now.

"Riku told me that once. Not about the Keyblade, about my friends. Just like that, 'cept with less of the f word." He didn't believe him. Not really. That's a part of this whole mess, actually. On top of that, Riku told that to a complete Sora, and if that Sora didn't believe him, what hope does an incomplete heart and a bunch of jumbled up memories in a borrowed body have? He's not even Sora. Not really. The Riku here would die before telling him the same thing.

"I want to believe that." A part of him does, actually. It's one part him, one part the spike in his brain, but it's a net positive, right?

If Sora had said any of that out loud, he would have seen the Winter Soldier literally throwing up their hands in exasperation, like a 40 year old 1930s mother exasperated at her nearly-grown children for being so fucking stupid. Just him, Sora says. Just him. Are you kidding them, Sora. Come on.

Forget Riku. You have a soldier now. And a witch, for that matter. And a demigod, and probably a bunch of other people Soldat doesn't know for sure about but is sure are there.

Sadly, all they can address is what he's said out loud. "Wanting to is getting there. You must be pretty poor student, though, if you're still stuck at 'wanting' when I've been telling you this almost every damn day. Either that or I'm a worse teacher than I thought." Remember that promise a few weeks ago to remind Sora often of his worth? Guess who has been keeping it. Maybe not every day, but pretty often, usually along with their network message for the day's observational goals.

Man, weird how not really liking to talk about things that hurt because they aren't fun pans out into negative feedback because he never get perspective on his own toxic thought patterns! Wild, right?

Anyway. He'd try his best to forget Riku, if the soldier really thought that was for the best, and he'd maybe be able to get it down to a dull ache, but he really, really can't. He'd try, though. He'd try for the rest of his life.

Sora reminds them right back about how it's okay if they don't get any farther and if they stay just like this because they have value now! Hey, he's certain of all of that. "I guess... it's an uphill kind of thing, right?"

It feels like his heart goes back and forth on this. One day he'll feel good, like a whole person, but the next, something reminds him of Riku, of the past, of the Keyblade, of Vanitas, of Skyler, and he spirals back down again. It's like there's a switch in his head that gets shoved back and forth depending on what he's told and what he thinks about and there's nothing in between. He's either a person or he's not. It drives him up a wall. It's his heart. His weak heart. (Or, like, hey, there's a spike up there too, but we don't talk about that.)

We have really gotta get someone to find out about that spike, man. Like really really need to. Might not fix all the issues, but it sure can't hurt.

"Good thing I'm very patient, then, huh," Soldat says, half grouchy and half affectionate. "Because I'm gonna keep doing it until you fucking believe it." Sorry, Sora, they love you bunches but it's been a bad couple days and that was some stupid shit you just said. The grouchiness remains despite the affection.

~~YANK! THAT! SPIKE!!!!~~

Sora loves the soldier lots, but love unfortunately doesn’t save people from being real stupid. Sora’s gonna keep plugging away at it, though. These kinds of patterns did literally save Sora’s life at the beginning of the month, after all. He doesn’t think of himself at all, but when he accidentally goes down that mental path, it’s nice to think of himself in terms of a person with value. It’s nice when he remembers what they say.

“Thanks.” For being patient. He knows they don’t have to be. He’s determined to pay them back, somehow. “I’ll keep working at it. I don’t want you leaving me in the dust. Gotta keep up.” If nothing else, at least his overactive competitiveness is good for this.

Soldat gives him a sidelong look of what is now grouchy bafflement. "I'm not leaving you anywhere." The context does not immediately make itself clear, that Sora is talking about improvement as a person.

Sora sticks his hands in his pockets and sort of flaps his hands so his jacket puffs out. "I'm not the only person here who needs to work on the whole thinking I'm an actual person thing, y'know." A sidelong look back. Two can play at that game, mister.

Edited (english hard) 2020-03-04 21:14 (UTC)

The arm makes a muffled ratcheting sound, and Soldat actually almost misses a step. Recovering, they hunch into their coat more thoroughly, shooting him a little glare. The only answer to that is a succinct: "Ugh."

That's a good way to make words go away again, Sora. Still, a single moment of flaring fear and a glare is a lot better than the instant panic and scrambling away the thought used to give them.

Sora takes his hands out of his pockets and double finger guns and clicks at them, but puts his hands back in his pockets without much fanfare. This is a "Got 'em" moment, but not really one from which Sora takes much pleasure.

"You're doing fine. This is okay, too." Sora looks into the distance, enjoying the view lit by the aurora. "It's just that, you know. You keep taking big ol' steps in the right direction. It's obvious." Sora frowns. "That's all I mean. If we're both doing stuff about this, I want to be able to keep up with you." He's still not up to a point where he considers themselves equals - he doesn't really have enough self-awareness for that - but he doesn't want to be the thing that holds them both back.

Big, obvious steps. Towards what, exactly. What steps. Soldat looks away with a frown, not even sure they want to know. It's been a hell of a couple days, and more digging at their own brain sounds like it's going to make the continuing low-level headache worse.

So they just hunch further and say, "You're fine, too."

Sora relaxes. Then they're both fine. Good enough for him. In the moment. For right now. (They'll fly on their own later, someday. At least he knows Soldat will.)

"Thanks. I'll remember that, this time." He'll try.

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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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