DECEMBER MINGLE

[etrayamods]

WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: December 21st - Early January
WHERE: Etraya
WHAT: Newcomers, a surprise gift from Tatianna, and a visitor!
NOTES\WARNINGS:

⏵ arrival ⏴ Welcome to Etraya! Arrival goes as expected - characters awaken on hospital beds and are offered an explanation of their situation: that they have arrived in the city of Etraya, and they are their world's only hope. They are welcome to wander the hospital if they would like to - the upper floors are mostly empty, full of pristine hallways and numerous rooms filled with supplies, cots, and things one would expect from a relatively average 21st-century hospital. The lobby is filled to the brim with tables of freshly baked goods. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banners are taped to the walls, and several other typical birthday decorations can be found in this area. A few of the baked goods tables are lined with massive cakes covered in unlit candles, just waiting for someone to grab a lighter and sing off-key. Is it anyone's birthday? Who knows! The companion bots seem to believe it's every new arrival's birthday and will greet them as such - with friendly waves and cheers as they make their way to the lobby. A coat rack is situated by the doors leading out of the hospital, covered in warm clothing that fits the new arrivals just right - whether it's to their preferred style or not is something else entirely. Some of them appear normal enough. Others? Well. They can't all be perfect, now can they? Outside the windows, the grass is covered in a couple of inches of loosely packed snow. We hope you enjoy your stay. ⏵ an unexpected gift ⏴ Out by the hospital stands a tall, decorated tree covered in candles and golden pinecones with a handsome, red velveteen tree skirt. In front of it are a few oversized wrapped gifts for show- and atop one of those sits a familiar woman. Or unfamiliar, if this is your first time. It's Tatianna in a slutty Santa outfit with a big ol’ burlap sack. “Hey, I got something for you,” she says, digging into the bag and rummaging for a moment. She produces a painted egg and holds it aloft. “It’s your Winter Solstice Egg! This is the egg holiday, right? Wait, shit. I’m mixing them up, aren’t I? ...Well. It’s a little late to change it. Here you go!” How one treats their egg is fully up to themselves. They can choose to ignore it entirely, or destroy it and leave the yolk and innards to rot on the ground. They can hand it over to someone else or care for it as if it were something precious. No one will prevent them from doing whatever they please with it! ⏵ naughty or nice ⏴However, how they treat the egg will define how the egg treats them in return. Those who keep the egg and tend to it will get the benefit of being able to watch it hatch seven days after they are handed the egg. Eggs that are treated with attention and love may yield a loyal companion, or a weapon of choice that always returns to its owner, while neglected eggs may yield a curious, cursed trinket or an animal who treats its new owner very much the same way its owner had treated it before it was born. Please submit an egg request below for what items you would like your character's eggs to hatch into! Please note that these cannot be things that would be applicable in the game. Those whose eggs are destroyed or forgotten will simply get the gift of... nothing! ⏵ free your spirit ⏴ With the winter chill gripping the air, a mysterious figure makes their presence known in Etraya - a towering, horned creature dragging a massive sack behind them. 𝓐 𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖇𝖚𝖎𝖑𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖍𝖆𝖘 𝖆 𝖜𝖊𝖆𝓴 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓. Regardless of a character's strengths or weaknesses, they will find that when Krampus raises his massive sack over their head, they are powerless to stop him from catching them. Those capable of great magical feats or other supernatural abilities will sense something... otherworldly about Krampus, but will not be able to place the source of that sensation. Once within Krampus' sack, they are welcome to fight, but escape is impossible. It will feel as if Krampus is dragging them over every rock possible, dragging the sack in through the rivers to the point it soaks through and drenches them - potentially almost drowning them. When the sack opens, they will find themselves in an impossibly dark space. Around them are others who have also been captured and dragged here by Krampus, trapped in small cages hanging from a massive, wiry tree. Krampus will return often, banging clawed hands and birch rods on the walls of the cages and knocking them into one another. 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘. The whisper resonates through the darkened area, regardless of Krampus' presence. Confess your secrets, and be freed. Otherwise? You'd better hope someone figures out where Krampus has set up base; those who refuse to confess may find themselves stuck here forever. ⏵ NOTES ⏴ Krampus' base is under Etraya! Deep within the catacombs, he has set up multiple cages to capture those who inhabit Etraya to punish them for their naughty habits. Fighting him is possible! Defeating him by means of combat is not, however, possible. Think of it like fighting a god: Krampus creates the rules in the space around him, including who can use what ability. For all questions relating to this log, please refer to the mod queries comment. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ. ⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Comments

[unaliveyourself]

[Dazai knows the lecture. Arguably, he understands it better now than he did when he was fifteen, when he was at Mori's right hand, commanding his own men. And perhaps the comparison he draws is not quite fair, given that the Sheep were never part of the Port Mafia, but it's one that was necessary all the same; Chuuya's question in response suggests to him he's grasped something of the weight of that lost connection, the man who was lost because Dazai hadn't been able to protect him.

He understands the parallel Chuuya is making, in asking it. To Mori, the Port Mafia was everything. To ensure its survival, the furtherance of its goals and standing, he would plunge his hands deep into the muck and viscera and filth. He would embody the night itself, even if it meant blocking out every last ray of the sun from ever reaching him again. The problem has never been in understanding why Mori did what he did. It is that in making that sacrifice, Mori had cut into the one thin thread that tied even someone like Dazai to humanity, the single artery from which blood flowed into his heart. If he hadn't cauterized the wound immediately, he would've bled dry, and then what would've become of him? He lives so close to death as it is, but he thinks he would become an even more unrecognizable creature that way, something not living nor dead, no longer capable of seeking either.]

I'm not.

[He shakes his head. For all that he works to be on the side that saves people now, he's well aware that he's not a good person. He chooses goodness when he can, when it serves the outcomes he wants, but sometimes he still knowingly puts even those he cares about through pain for the sake of those outcomes. His blood will always be mafia black. And that's why he can't forgive Ougai Mori.

And so he admits, very simply:]

If it meant Odasaku would be able to live, there is nothing and nobody I wouldn't sacrifice. Even if it meant he hated me for the rest of his life, any cost would be worth it. Mori-san feels the same about the Port Mafia. Don't assume I don't realize, Chuuya. I have always known.

[He closes his eyes, that smile from before on his lips again, weighted down with grief that goes beyond his ability to speak words to it.]

If I were a better man, I could say, I understand, I would've done the same thing in your position. I can only be the man I am, though.

[His eyes open again, and he stares down that very last latch. Somehow, now, it's easier than he thought it might be to say what will open it.]

You want to know a real secret, Chuuya? I don't know who I would be if I felt differently. It's why I'm actually ... a little afraid to die here. I don't cooperate for any other reason, than not wanting to forget.

[Click.]

[materialized]

[ That doesn't come as a surprise. Chuuya asked because he already knew the answer, after all. He might be slow enough to miss when Dazai was intentionally captured, but then, in his heart he knew that he wouldn't be executed. He wouldn't be able to stand it. However much of a traitor he was, however much bad blood their was, however much he hates him and wants him to die -

He wouldn't be able to accept anyone else killing him. He couldn't allow it. In that, Mori and Chuuya are the same and altogether different.

But Chuuya knows Dazai in a way that the Agency can't, because they were just fifteen when they met. Because three years is a long, long time at that tender age. Because they could be close solely due to not acknowledging anything that made them such. ]

Tch... Dumbass. I already knew that.

[ There's a deep frown. He did, and he didn't. It was that sort of instinctive knowledge. It feels slimy when said. It's like a shadowy, fungal, consuming blob now that it's been said - something creeping and crawling, faceless, showing teeth, that might consume both of them. That could cover the pair of them, choke them, rot them out.

It's a bit much, for a pair of people who have always kept such a polite distance, silently agreed to not press on one another. The words leave a vile and bitter taste on his tongue, like the aftertaste of some poison. ]

Dazai, you absolute moron... [ He says that again for good measure, because he hears that soft click, it's there, it's there, and he doesn't want to say this, and this is all so infuriating, and where the Hell is everyone else now - ] What the Hell is wrong with you? You're supposed to be the best strategist, the smartest of everyone... [ And those words are practically spit, as emotional as ever, ]<./small> So how the Hell haven't you figured out that everyone's like that?

Everyone has things that they can't forget - people that they can't forget. Dazai has just one, but Chuuya has so many. He has so many, and he hates Dazai all that much more for it, because it certainly must be easier to remember one person than many - he's forgetting. He's forgetting voices, he's forgetting gestures, and worst of all he's forgetting faces. He's forgetting the smiles and tears, he's forgetting so much.

He lifts his hand, but it stops at rubbing the back of his neck.

He can't forget it. He can't remember an umbrella hanging over him. He can't forget how cold it was. How lonely it was. How it got at once colder and warmer it was when released from the torrent of rain.

Chuuya can't forget that look though. He can't forget those words.

He didn't feel cold anymore. ]

[unaliveyourself]

[That's the core tragedy of it, isn't it? For all Dazai's intelligence, his ability to make uncannily accurate predictions, to read moves in a fight, to strategize and plot several moves ahead, he's always ... struggled to grasp at the core of humanity, of what it meant to live, rather than simply not die.

He has spent twenty-two years not dying. In a year, he will be as old as Odasaku was when he stopped living. And yet, for all that he lives in a way he likes better, he still doesn't understand anything about living. Chuuya is his natural opposite, in that way; he shines so brightly with life that it's difficult to look at him, and some part of him will always envy that. His own heart struggles so desperately to beat in that way, to thrum with more than the memory of three glasses of whiskey, but he is akin to a man lost in the desert, chasing mirages. Whenever he thinks he's reached an oasis, it slips through his fingers, fading away into so much dust and wind.

The door is open, yet his legs feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds. He can't find the energy to get them off the ground.]

It's ironic, isn't it? That my ability is called No Longer Human. I never really have been, I think. All I can do is reach out my hand toward humanity, knowing that anything that comes into my grasp will be reverted to nothingness the same way. If things were different ... maybe I could've saved him.

[If he weren't so inherently empty, so fundamentally disconnected, maybe he would've known what to say. Maybe even with the mistakes he'd made, the betrayals he didn't see coming, he could've stopped Odasaku from walking out to the very last fight of his life. He doesn't forgive Mori, but more importantly, he can never forgive himself for that.]

All of my plans and strategies -- they were all meaningless, in the end. I couldn't protect what mattered to me. So I want to protect his memory instead ... and die with that most human part of me intact. I can't do that here. So let’s leave, shall we?

[materialized]

[ Chuuya is quiet. He says nothing, and that is in of all its own a statement. He doesn't press. He doesn't comfort. He offers nothing save lend an ear to those words, because things like platitudes and comforts are beyond them. Those are the feelings Dazai wants to express, nothing more and nothing less, and Chuuya is cognizant of how any words he could offer now would only taint that.

In the Port Mafia, one minds their business. There's some unspoken rule to not press too hard on one's heart. He respects that now, as much as he did then, because Dazai needs only say as much as he wants to.

His former partner doesn't need to say anything more than he has for Chuuya to understand, and even before he did, some part of him had. That same part of him which can't forgive it even now, because he's given up so much more.

Such is their relationship, built on complications and resentment and respect and such other things that the average person couldn't possibly understand.

Such as it is, that he pressed on the subject no further, and that is a kind of care, a sort of acceptance, because the man before him simply is as he is. He is as he states he is. There's no words of comfort that one can offer, and Chuuya is ever not one to try, ]

... Yeah. I'm tired of being in this shithole, and having nothing to listen to but your voice is enough to burst my eardrums. Let's get the Hell out of here.

[ No dramatics. No promises of acceptance. It simply is there, as it always was. He shoves the door of the cage open with such force that it bangs against the bars beside it, echoing through the area, and he clicks his tongue and glares at the darkness left to them, because of course it's some bullshit mockery of a trust exercise, or whatever the Hell one would call this. That, he doesn't know nor care, because neither name or title would make it less vile. ]

We still have a job to do.

[ They're still partners.

They're still partners, and Chuuya still hates him.

They're still partners, and Chuuya still hates him, and he won't let him die without attaining whatever goal he's set for himself. Not here. Not now. Not in this shitty ass fairytale bullshit setup, not in some garbage bonding room.

They're still partners. ]

After this is over, I'll kill you as many times as you want. But for now we gotta focus.