(no subject)

[espersions]

Who: espersions, belfire, moribound, popsometags, their cr, their cr's cr...
When: Early April
Where: Source Below: Cerealia's most surreal karaoke bar
What: How do you come to terms with death and disappearance? Get hammered and sing about it, obviously.
Rating/Warning: alcohol, hot tubs, death mentions, and j-pop


Ket Whiss is gone for good, and Minato has returned from his PLAYER ONE GAME OVER moment, courtesy of a hungry monster. And there's the residual trauma of everyone's jungle/elemental adventures.

So, well. Why not have a party?

Source Below is Cerealia's most popular — and most surreal — karaoke bar. It features a costume closet, with hundreds of outfits to try on, for that full idol experience. There are themed rooms: one with overflowing candy, another built to resemble the interior of a spaceship, one full of robotic cats who yowl in time with the music, to a pitch-black room filled with pairs of enormous, glowing, slowly-blinking eyes....

But Team Catastrophe's party isn't in any of these, because none of these losers made a reservation. Instead, they got stuck with the only one left, covered in white tile, with a hot tub in the center.

This is a bad idea on so many levels, but it's not as if that's ever stopped anybody.

(ooc: open to any extended cr, feel free to handwave how you heard about it. the more the merrier!)

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Comments

[covenantal]

[ A playboy? He certainly doesn't think of himself that way. (But if you think he sounds bad now, you should have seen him back home when half his high school was in love with him.)

Wow. This guy is something, huh? From the way he talks, he seems really lively... But that last bit catches his attention. Yu tilts his head just a touch. ]

Does that mean you know Kazuya-san, by any chance?

[theshiningone]

Yeah, I do. We tried to make a porn movie together which was fun... But him being him, he just had to blow up the relationship in my face.

[Which didn't tell the whole story, but said enough. There was a lot to do with how to manage humanity and Hiro didn't exactly approve of his whole "keep humanity in a safe net" method. While he saw the benefits... There were more flaws with that. Like letting the world stagnate if you kept humanity contained in a bubble. They couldn't grow without making mistakes.]

So you know the idiot or what? If he tried to jump in through your window, I've got a special trick that will keep him away.

1/2

[covenantal]

[ did he say a porn movie ]

[covenantal]

[ RECOVERS QUICKLY,

and moves on. Wow, seriously? This really is an interesting group. ]

You could say that. I don't know him well, and we didn't meet under the best of circumstances. He was upset, but he had every right to be. [ Yu sighs out. ] I just noticed something odd about him at the time. Something about his eyes. Would you know anything about that?

[theshiningone]

[His eyes, huh? There's a moment where Hiro goes quiet as he remembered having a brief encounter with Bel in the jungle. It didn't freak him out, but made him more attentive about that demonic potential that lurked in him.]

I might know something about that. [He'll take a little swag of his glass before speaking again.] Were his speech mannerisms different? And did he produce a strange kind of a fire?

[Could it really be called fire? It produced heat, but Hiro couldn't control it properly with the Heat Factor. Hm... It felt more like a 'will' than an actual flame.]

[covenantal]

[ Yu takes that answer in quietly. So there is something to his suspicions after all. ]

I can't say I know him well enough to tell you. And no, there wasn't any fire. He was unmistakably angry with me at one point, but ... [ His gaze moves across the room, finding wherever the cheerful and probably naked Kazuya is at the moment. ] ... we managed to talk it out. I just noticed his eyes. They definitely turned red, not just once, but twice.

[theshiningone]

I see, then...

[There's a pause before Hiro puts his drink down and faces Yu completely. He's smiling at him again, but this one doesn't reach his eyes.]

First of all, I'm going to ask you two questions... But both are very unpleasant scenarios. You can tell me to stop at anytime, but I would like to hear your opinion on 'em.

[covenantal]

[ ... just what has he started?

Not one to back down, Yu squares his shoulders and nods seriously. ]

I understand.

[theshiningone]

[The smile doesn't not leave his face with this scenario.]

Now picture yourself in a room with a few of your friends and you've just cornered a pair of murderers. Then the murderers points their guns at you.

One of them has a shaky grip on their gun and the other has a professional hold on their gun. Which one is more scarier?

[covenantal]

[ Yu is silent for a long moment. Not necessarily because he finds the question difficult to answer, but because he's wondering at being asked the question. ]

The one with the shaky grip. They're less predictable, and you don't know what they'll do.

[theshiningone]

[There's a short pause as if he's trying to get a feel of this guy. Something that he'd always do in social situations to see what made them tick.]

Now if the one with a shaky grip was a friend, then what would you do?

[covenantal]

[ Just what has he gotten himself into? ]

Try to talk to them. If their hand is shaking, they must not be certain about doing it.

[theshiningone]

Nooooow let's say that they got possessed by a freaky cheese monster and they threw a quip like "I'll turn y'all into swiss cheese!" and they looked 100% percent sure that they would do it.

[A beat.]

What then?

[covenantal]

[ ... ]

I'd probably at least try to make sure they didn't have the gun anymore. As long as that were the case, I'd just keep trying to talk to them, and get them help if I thought they needed it.

[ A beat. ]

Do they actually possess the power to turn everyone into swiss cheese, in this scenario?

[theshiningone]

They certainly could! It wouldn't be very grate if your buddies got in such a pickle in that situation.

[...]

What were we talking about again? I lost track and got a bit hungry once we started talking about cheese.

[covenantal]

[ Ah. Is he being trolled after all? Yu debates internally on whether or not to remind this guy, trying to decide if the derailment was intentional or not.

In the end he smiles crookedly, sighing through his nose. ]

I can see Minato-san and Kazuya-san have interesting taste in friends. [ The politest shade. A pause, wherein he glances away, looking out over the room. ] If this is a topic I shouldn't be asking about, that's fine.

[theshiningone]

[Hiro totally noticed it and honestly didn't mind as what Yu thought about him. Whatever others saw him as was their business and he'd leave it at that.]

I'd say you should ask Kazuyan yourself, but he'd totally dodge the topic altogether. [And he'll take a sip from his glass.] What I'm trying to say is that you should be more careful when it comes to certain people around here. Not everyone here is entirely what they seem from first glance.

[Himself included. Hiro was something more than human now, but he didn't have demonic impulses influencing himself, however.] Which raises a question... What kind of world did you come from? Was it entirely a human one?

[covenantal]

[ For what it's worth, by interesting, he means only interesting - something neither inherently positive nor negative. He's not really sure what to think, still, other than they're all in good company for being a bit strange. Himself included. ]

That much I can understand. Not many people are what they seem to be at first.

[ Whether it's on a more literal level like being human, or more subtle like having a deceptive personality. He's had his own problematic run-ins with the latter.

The question wins a thoughtful sound. ]

That's hard to answer. Yes, but that's not to say it was mundane. [ A beat. ] Actually, Minato-san and I are from the same world, just a few years apart.

[theshiningone]

[That went for anyone... It didn't matter if you were human or non human. There was more to anyone that met the eye. From the sound of hearing Minato and Yu being from the same world...

Hm. His eyes twinkle in interest from hearing that. It wasn't very day that you met someone from the same world that you were from around here.]

Seriously? That's a really cool coincidence. [...] Kazuyan and I are from different worlds, but I think we went through similar experiences.

[At the very least... Hiro knew that they both dealt with demons and had to make some big decisions on how to deal with the world. However, he wouldn't want to go through three world loops (one that he wasn't around for) of the same deal happening again.]

[covenantal]

Sometimes it feels like more than just a coincidence.

[ It's uncanny, how much he and Minato share in common. They're both the Wild Card, and share the same powers and experiences with the Velvet Room. They're both the leaders of their respective teams. And then there's... well, that strange feeling he gets sometimes is neither here nor there. ]

Similar experiences?

[theshiningone]

Yeah... Very similar. Our worlds were invaded by demons. And that had triggered a long string of events that would've ended our worlds. I had to put up with that twice in a row, but I think he just had to deal with it once.

[He'll take another sip from his glass. From the tone of his voice, Hiro sounds like he's just playing off all of this as some weird video game he played before.]

Buuut I think he's mad at me for having certain things that he didn't. [And he just gives an amused snort.] What a brat, right? It doesn't matter who had what or who didn't have what... The point is that we survived through that shit. So why bother getting jealous about it?

[It really really was stupid to him... Hence why he could laugh it all off. He wouldn't expect anything less(er) from an immature guy like Kazuya.]