JERICHO ● SEPTEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JERICHO

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Prologue: New Characters

You've been plagued with a reoccuring dream, as of late. Every time you sleep, the dream returns to you.

It always begins the same way: As a breath held for too long. As a pressure at the base of your spine. A silence that presses against the skin like confession, like prophecy. A ripple moves through your bones. A tide builds and pulls at your feet, familiar by now. You dream of a black, soundless wave, thick like oil and starlight, swelling across the horizon line. You've seen the wave before, countless times, always rising. With every night, it never reaches you. You always seem to wake before it does . . . That is, until tonight.

The wave moves slow, deliberate— like something ancient and alive. And when it finally crashes, there is no harsh impact. Only warmth. Only submersion. Rather than drowning, you are being claimed with saltwater that's sweet with myrrh. The darkness embracing you pulses with desire. Then, a voice envelops you.

"Come home."
It dribbles with honey-like promise, like a truth you've always known, whispered now from within your marrow more like temptation than a request.

"You are mine. You always were."
The voice offers purpose. Worship. Belonging. And when you wake . . . You wake changed, with a mask on your face you did not choose. Elegant. Sacred. Too important to remove. You have been given a gift. A new beginning.

Welcome home, new Vessels.

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Sink Down Like Precious Stones

( content warnings: drowning, body horror )

Vessels awaken within the dreamscape as the black wave recedes from their skin like velvet falling off the bone, their masks in place over their eyes and left afloat in the watery expanse. All around them, the ocean stretches infinite and lightless— so still it mirrors the sky above, indistinguishable from the void. Far in the distance, massive obsidian walls curve inward, enclosing this vast seascape like a forgotten temple basin. And there, at the far horizon, one glow pierces the dark: a low-burning fire flickering within a half-sunken structure of impossible architecture— arched, ribbed, as though built from marble and cathedral glass.

This is a test, and it begins with belief.

Those with unwavering faith— whether in Sleep, another god, or even themselves— will find the surface beneath their feet holds firm. The sea becomes glass, and they may rise, and walk. But those adrift in doubt begin to sink. Precious stone creeps over their skin. Joints stiffen. Flesh cracks. Breath slows. It is not death, but it is close and might as well be hell. Your only salvation lies in your own conviction . . . Or the mercy of another Vessel who happens to walk.

Those who drown will not die. They will loop this moment— sinking, blackness, return, sink again— until belief takes root in some way. Alternatively, they may awaken in a later dreamspace . . . Changed.

NOTES:

• Pale white fish as well as glowing jellyfish may be encounted. The fish stare at vessels as they drown, and jellyfish may leave behind a shock that could temporarily stop the process of crystalization. But only temporarily— and their stings are excrutiating.

TOKEN EFFECTS:

• Magic becomes volatile— spells flicker, overcharge, or fizzle unpredictably when cast on or near the ocean.
• When you cast, your veins glow from beneath the skin, but not with light. It's writhing. Like something trapped under glass.
• When channeling magic, your mouth may fill with brine and blood.

OFFERING EFFECTS:

• The water responds emotionally— thrashing with fury or calming with yearning depending on the Offering's state of mind.
• The sea amplifies desire and instinct, making base emotions harder to suppress— rage, hunger, longing all churn just beneath the surface.
• The black water feels too warm, too alive, clinging to the body like memory; any stillness invites visions of Sleep's embrace, both reverent and consuming.

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You Taste Like New Flesh

( content warnings: body horror, psychological horror, compulsion, unreliable reality )

The ocean path ends at a palace carved of pearl and spun silk, impossibly perched where water meets nothingness. Whether you have traversed the black sea on trembling feet or simply awaken seated at an impossibly long table, it makes no difference. You are here now, and welcomed, suddenly in attire fit for a gala. Around this table sit countless Dream-Vessels, many silent and still, faces unreadable in the flickering candlelight wearing generic, six-eyed masks. The table stretches beyond sight, arching beneath creeping vines that twist like ancient veins overhead, blooming with strange blossoms that beat with energy. Flames dance atop dozens of candles— some burn on brass holders, others hover, like fireflies caught mid-flight, their shadows flickering and shifting with an otherworldly rhythm. Around you, phantasmal forms shimmer on pedestals: Sleep's ancient Guardians are eternalized through memorial, monstrous and magnificent, lost to time yet enshrined in reverence. On the highest pedestal stands a still living One, silent and watching the feast with somber eyes. Sleep's voice whispers in your ear, encouraging a glance to, perhaps, see what you may become.

"Feast, My Dear Vessels. Until you taste like New Flesh."

The foods before you don not come unmeddled with. Each bite pulls memories from your bones to the surface— moments buried or erased, but these are not just yours. The banquet feeds on shared history, stirring secrets tangled between you and the others here. To eat is to open a door: to risk awakening something dormant, to invite others inside your buried truths, to forge bonds or betrayals that can never be unseen.

Eton Mess: Crushed meringue, tangled cream, and berries that bleed like bruises when bitten. Sweetness melts quickly, leaving your tongue cold. As you eat, a memory rises— but you don't experience it alone. The person nearest you sees what you see, hears what you hear, feels what you felt. Together, you can alter one key detail, and that change ripples outward, shifting how you both remember the event.

Deviled Kidneys: Spiced and seared, the metallic richness clings to your mouth, as if tasting old blood. Eating summons the echo of a painful or violent memory, but your partner experiences it with you.

Roasted Lamb in Mint Sauce: The sweetness of the meat is cut by mint sharp enough to sting the throat. Your act of consumption awakens a craving, but not in you— in the Vessel sharing this dish. They feel an inexorable pull toward your memory, even without knowing what they seek. The bond persists until the craving is confronted.

Honey Scouse: A thick, golden stew heavy with warmth, but beneath the sweetness, something cloying curls around the edges. Every shared spoonful spreads a slow, creeping influence between you and your partner: intrusive visions, subtle compulsions, small lapses in agency. Neither of you can tell whose thoughts belong to whom.

Starpit Fruit: Plum-sized and faintly glowing, the juice leaves your fingertips dusted in silver, like handling starlight. When bitten, the fruit releases the memory of a forgotten wish, not to you but to the person beside you. They see it clearly— and know exactly what you once wanted most, even if you had buried it.

Marigold Brandy: A golden spirit served warm, glowing faintly as though sunlight has been trapped inside the glass. When lifted, it releases a soft, floral scent. The first sip draws you and your partner into a shared burst of joy— a memory that makes you swell with happiness. The sensation is so immediate, so electric, that when the memory breaks, your bodies ache to move, to speak, to draw more positivity to light. You may feel an irresistible pull to get up and dance on the wide palace floors, even if no music is playing . . . And if others nearby drink as well, the effect multiplies.

Saints Breath Chalice: A dark, wine-thick cordial served in tarnished silver cups etched with symbols that shift when stared at too long. The liquid smells faintly of frankincense and something sweeter— blood-warm and alive. Drinking it floods you and your partner with the overwhelming sensation of being inside someone else's celebration, a memory that belongs to neither of you: a vast mass of black, with branching antlers and six, glowing red eyes. It reaches to sink its claws into your chest as she sings: One. Beloved. We were meant to be. It is impossible to tell whether you're witnessing joy or manic worship. There is chanting you cannot understand but somehow already know, drums that sync with your heartbeat until you can feel nothing else. Your limbs begin to twitch, then sway, then move without conscious thought, drawn into a dance you do not remember learning. If more than two people drink, your movements synchronize perfectly, your breath matching theirs, until the room seems stop to watch.

The table awaits.

NOTES:

• Feasting becomes addictive. The more a character eats, the harder it is to stop. Gluttony may cause physical consequences: nosebleeds, twitching fingers, warping speech, uncontrollable confessions, or dripping nectar from their mouths.
• Those who refuse to eat at all begin to starve in a dream-sense: they lose color, smell burning, and feel the weight of Sleep's gaze. Her wrath isn't immediate— but it grows the longer you reject the feast. She takes offense.

TOKEN EFFECTS:

• Each spell cast after eating releases parasitic energy— manifesting as flowers, thorns, parasitic insects or rot— either from their own body or from someone they recently touched.
• Casting warps your limbs temporarily: too many joints, fingers curl the wrong way, nerves burn like wires.
• Touching others leaves sigils burned into their skin. These will briefly carry over into the waking world during next month's event. Runecasters will get the innate feeling that this symbol has a meaning summed up as "The Night Does Not Belong To God". How they interpret that is up to them.

OFFERING EFFECTS:

• The act of devouring awakens an overwhelming desire, often physical, but sometimes emotional or spiritual. This desire clings to another Vessel at the table, creating obsessive attachment or aggression.
• The more they eat, the more their monstrous traits subtly emerge.
• Consuming another Vessel's memory (if shared or touched) grants a brief glimpse of their deepest fear or weakness.

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There's Something In The Way You Lay

( content warnings: sexual content, voyeurism, body modification, omegaverse traits, loss of agency )

Beneath its pearlescent halls, beyond the banquet of flickering candles and dream-Vessels who eat in hollow silence, a spiral staircase winds downward. Its steps are damp and velvet-slick. The further you descend, the warmer the air becomes— humid, cloying, thick with the scent of sweat, salt, and incense. The sounds reach you first: Slaps, gasps, the wet chorus of bodies and perverse intimacy. Laughter, muffled sobs, the echo of whispered names long forgotten. At the base lies a corridor of "private" rooms. Their doors swing open with dreamlike invitation. Inside, the scenes unfold: past dream-Vessels lost in tableau— arched backs, bitten lips, mouths open in prayer or obedience. Some are alone, coiled in worship. Others tangle in groups, indistinguishable where one body ends and another begins. Vines bloom across the ceilings, watching. The walls glisten with breath. You see their faces, but you can't quite distinguish what or who they are. You may not remember choosing a role, but the dream has chosen for you. α or Ω— and with the naming, your body changes. There is no shame here, only devotion made manifest. This is how Sleep is worshipped now: through cruelty and surrender, through the giving and the taking of flesh.

NOTES

• Masks may optionally offer a sort of glamour for Vessels who wander into these chambers— they will not be able to recognize each other. How much of that, whether it be appearance, voice, and so on, is up to you.
• Past dream-Vessels perform for no one, eyes vacant, movements perfect, as if only a ghost of a memory. Player characters may interact with them and even partake in intimacy with them, but be warned: they are emotionally absent and may cause symptoms of succumbence that could be remedied with a proper, player-character tether.
• Tools hang on the walls: Rods of all sizes, slick with heat. Collars that hum with low, seductive voltage. Blindfolds that intensify physical contact, There's no need for cuffs or chains when there are vines that seem to respond to the α party's mood— tightening, flowering, or reaching for skin. You are free to come up with your own items.
• α perks:: Instinctive claiming (done through biting, rubbing, branding, etc), an almost predatory focus and obsession for those who interest them, pack gravity (the ability to attract one or more vessels at once), emitting a scent that ignites heat/rut in others, darker urges surge and a commanding voice.
Ω perks: High pain tolerance, instinctive yielding, emotional synchrony with those being watched, self-lubricating, hypersensitive, scent tracking, intense need to please or be filled emotionally, physically, and spiritually. When touched, glowing runes bloom across the skin.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Spells cast during acts of intimacy may provoke a heightened sensation of euphoria for both caster and whoever is affected by the spell.
• Magic may manifest as misty appendages— extra hands, tongues, eyes, etc.
• Divine energy becomes volatile when passed through the body— ecstasy may border on agony, or vice versa, and Tethering becomes impossibly euphoric.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• Flesh becomes malleable mid-act— bones bending, jaws unhinging, skin blooming open, etc.
• Animalistic traits emerge: tails, claws, growls, tentacles, scent glands— all begging to be used.
• Feeding and Tethering are indistinguishable— hunger becomes worship, and worship becomes need.

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I am not worthy

( content warnings: body horror, violence, gore, parasitic/invasive feeding, death )

Wherever you are, the palace begins to rot. First slowly, then all at once: vines swell with black fluid, splitting at the seams. They burst from beneath marble tiles, coil up pillars, slither across frames and vacant thrones like arteries choking a heart. The candlelight flickers. One by one, the flames throughout the palace float upward . . . And die. No smoke. No warning. Just wet silence. Then the Dream-Vessels begin to fall. They do not scream as they do. They collapse like marionettes, limbs askew. Their flesh splits open along wounds that should not exist— a rip at the neck, teeth marks prying open the ribcage, a bite that swallows half a torso. Bones jut like sculpted ivory. Entrails slither across the floor like garlands. Some burst mid-air, as if the dream demands spectacle. Others fold in on themselves until all that's left of them is a mound of flesh.

"I am not worthy."

One voice. Ten. A thousand—layered, glitching, sweaty. It echoes from the walls, the bodies, the seams in the floor. The corpses twitch in time with the chant, jerking violently. Some snap backwards, eyes wide, jaws unhinged. Others explode— blossoming in gore, raining viscera. From the heaving pile of ruined Dream-Vessels, something forms.

It lurches into being: stitched from tongues, teeth, torsos. Weeping. Wailing. Worshipping. A monstrosity of raw flesh and faith: all failures made meat. Its eyes (are they eyes?) blink out. Arms claw outwards, too many to count. Its scent is of copper, sweat, and sorrow.

When The Abomination chooses to feed, it seeks not flesh, but the softest rot inside you. An appendage uncoils from its writhing mass and unhinged jaw— veined, slick, and trembling like a violated root. It drives itself into your mouth, splitting your lips with obscene tenderness, and sinks deep into your throat, locking you still.

What it draws out is not blood. It siphons your doubts, your fears, your most secret self-hatred. Your inadequacy. Every buried shame. Your hate. Your negativity. Every flinch of unworthiness. Every moment you believed yourself unlovable, unseen, too small. It gorges on what you hide from even yourself, and the more you try to resist, the sweeter your sorrow becomes. The last thing it takes is your life force, and then your viscera, leaving you wilted and shrivled like a hollow log.

This death is violating and feels painfully slow. You're drained raw of your vitality until you're but a brittle husk that breaks to dust in the wind. It seems near impossible to destroy, always reforming into bits and pieces left smudged behind. Perhaps your best bet it to run, or attempt to wake yourself up from this nightmare.

One's voice repeats in choked sobs: I am not worthy.

NOTES:

• Wounds from the beast linger. You may wake bleeding or marked.
• If devoured, characters will awaken the following month extremely fatigued during the first 3-5 days of the month. They may also sporadically rigurgitate black sludge. Characters who die and are already in the game may requesta plot clue, that will be a vision your character will dream of before awakening.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Magic recoils violently when used on The Abomination, backfiring with psychic screams or ripping into your flesh.
• Your hands glow uncontrollably, burning what you touch— even those you love.
• Magic becomes hungry; it demands pieces of your body to function. A tooth. A nail. A rib (and so on).

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The rage it stirs in you is monstrous. You begin to shift uncontrollably— flesh blooms, bones crack under strain.
• Your body begins moving before you decide to. Twitching toward The Abomination, and toward the scent of despair.
• During the chaos, you may develop a fixation with another Vessel's flaw. You can smell it on them. It entrances you . . . To the point that you may feel the urge to feed them to The Abomination.

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OOC NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia's second TDM, which doubles as our third gamewide event!

➤ This TDM is considered game canon. You are free to have your character remember as many details as possible.

➤ Only new characters are free to experiment with the Vessel options to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible. Current characters must remain as their chosen Vessel type unless you requested a switch, which can be done on the Taken page.

➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!

➤ Veteran players, I ask to please refrain from making post-event threads for the time being! We have some important information to take into account in next month's event when characters are slated to "wake up". At the very least, please wait for the information to be offered on the next plotting post. Thank you everyone for your patience!

➤ Please comment on the TDM's INVITE TL if you are a new player interested in joining the game, but don't yet have an invite. Current players or the mod may reach out to extend an invite. Once you've got one, please don't forget to comment on the Invite page so you may properly link it in your reserve and app.

➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

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Comments

[potentialman]

[ Really, there are a lot of things he could say here, but most of it is bog-standard survivalist knowledge or could be found on any "things not to do in the zombie apocalypse" clickbait article, and that's not hard to come by.

Something more...unique to their circumstances, though. ]

Sleep has warped almost everything still alive in the city -- if you get a look at any of the flora or fauna, it'll be obvious what I mean. It can and will happen to us, if we're not careful.

The most surefire way we've found to ward it off is human contact and connection. There's kind of a psychic link permeating everything, and making use of that helps.

[ It sounds hokey as hell, and he knows it, but...it is what it is. ]

I think most people have been living in small groups, for all the obvious reasons, but also because of this. We've managed to carve out some safe places.

[hallowedly]

( Trinkets of terrible knowledge, a survival-of-the-fittest guide book through the lens of a pragmatic teenager. No mention of base facilities, less of practicalities, not aq whiff of cigarettes.

Only animal comforts even the most seemingly modern of children can't so repudiate in times of need: safety, shelter. A concern for... greenery? ( Fauna. ) Another for native physchic emanations, likely a professional habit.

And then perhaps the real treasure were the 'human contact and connection' they made along the way. A fine takeaway.

But what Seishirou, nodding along with this string of unfortunate apocalyptic bullet points, doesn't hear is: )

...a predator. You're not describing an imminent danger. ( Unless. ) Is sleep that?

( So much for the merits of the daily eight hours. )

[potentialman]

[ If Seishirou winds up getting absorbed into a weird zombie hivemind because he's incapable of having sincere human relationships, then Megumi will...probably not bother to say "I told you so," really. He's more than willing to impart what he knows, but whether anyone chooses to listen -- that's already filed away in the drawer of No Longer His Problem. ]

It fluctuates. Everything's been worse during the full moon, for instance. But anything that's already been twisted has the potential to try and drag you down with it.

[hallowedly]

( The... full moon. How romantically archaic. Certainly, some traditions favor the ebb and tide, the blossoming yin of her presence. And is Sleep here not also a dame? Perhaps a matter of like calling to like.

Humming, he finally, wretchedly, calls himself back to form, standing straight, drawing both hands neatly behind himself. Like a child waiting on the principal's pronouncement, for all it's the... how old is fair Megumi? ...teenager of some kind, dictating the terms.

In unlife, as in Kamui-led apocalypse. )

I... think it would be out of place if I were to say, if you need help, call on me. But you're still... despite what I assume are remarkable abilities, you still seem — ( Immature. Vulnerable. ) ...what I'm saying is, this all sounds a little terrifying. And if I can help, please let me know.

[potentialman]

[ He is doing a very good job of not immediately bristling at the adjectives that pause implies, but Megumi really wants to say -- that should be what I'm telling you. "A little terrifying," really. As if he hasn't been scrounging through the zombie apocalypse for two months already on his own, and doing just fine with it.

(Well. Emotional damage aside, but that, like so much of what goes wrong in Megumi's life, is getting filed away as not crippling and therefore not to be lingered on.) ]

The same goes to you. If you wind up around Morningside Heights, I have that area pretty well scouted.

[hallowedly]

You're that certain we'll wake up to your stomping grounds? ( A beat, then laughing, crystalline: ) Or that we'll wake up at all?

( Dreams are wispy things with tendrils and teeth, fundamentally predatory. To think, centuries of biological study, and man still can't quite say why he sleeps. And correlation is hardly causality — whatever cycle's allowed waking before needn't pay them the same courtesy now.

But that's hardly a truth to visit on a child. )

[potentialman]

I think you have even odds on winding up there or not.

I don't think I will be lucky enough to find my way out of it this way, though.

[hallowedly]

( How... charmingly depressive. Is it the age, or perhaps the scenery? Children don't become tragedy, and yet here Fushiguro Megumi performs a brilliant rendition of woeful martyrdom.

Were Seishirou's face not schooled in perfect, creeping anguish, he might make a turn for artfless nonchalance. As things are, his brows draw close, tension riding his jaw, one hand held out clumsily. )

Come with me, then. I'll protect you. ( Always good, after all, to have another body to throw at various obstacles. Particularly one possessed of some strength. ) Even if I might slow you down, we'll still make it there together. I couldn't forgive myself otherwise.

[potentialman]

[ Megumi doesn't think he's going to be particularly protected here. But that's the point, really. Will this guy be okay on his own?

-- probably better to keep an eye on him, at least initially. Regardless of what he thinks of anyone (or...isn't sure what to make of them, as the case may be), he doesn't really need letting them become another weird shambling hivemind mushroom on his conscience. ]

Okay.

[hallowedly]

( Okay. There are firmer endorsements, more thriving. Then again, Fushiguro Megumi speaks like every boy of the age, perhaps naturally decrying the thought of mature help. Can Seishirou truly fault him? Was he so different at the age?

...redder-handed, he supposes. Wet and glistening and unclean, dragging death after him like a trailing dog. This was his ancestry, that was his doing. He can't point fingers with that same hand.

Instead, he lowers it now, accepting the quiet dignity of a — child and that Sakurazuka Seishirou, mere veterinarian, wouldn't presume to speak against it. )

Don't worry. I won't make you look uncool before your friends.

[potentialman]

I'm not really worried about that. You can't be any worse than Gojo-sensei.

[ That and Megumi is well aware that he's not cool by any normal measure, though he keeps that to himself. He's absolutely the tragically unhip nerd of his class and he's fine with that. ]

[hallowedly]

( Gojo-sensei. A name to be stored and safely guarded in the tresory of Seishirou's increasingly expanding repertoire. He has done himself a disservice, untangling more truths about the magic of the world than its inhabitants.

Time to change that, slithering soundlessly to cross the distance to the young man, slipping to his right to favor the golden gleam of Seishirou's remaining left natural eye. )

I look forward to making the acquaintance of someone even more embarrassing than me. I thought the species had run extinct!

( Must be a frumpy, chatty, uselessly benign character, musn't he? Gojo-sensei. Possibly a homeroom teacher? Or an afterschool club director. Certainly, possessed of some skill, given the likely nature of Fushiguro Megumi's instruction/ )

I don't suppose your parents are here. ( A statistical improbability, though, Sumeragi Subaru's presence on the grounds suggests, still in the realm of possibility. ) Family? Friends?

( ...anyone who'd miss a prodigious child, gone woefully missing, should such a recourse hit? They're but strangers, negotiating their next steps. Murder remains on everyone's cards. )

[potentialman]

[ The eyeroll is immediate at parents, though Megumi does at least manage not to scoff out loud. That train left the station a decade ago. Not like I'd recognize them if they were. ]

It's just been people I met here.

[ Well. Yuji's shown up, but until this part of the dream is over, Megumi's not counting on the fact that Sleep will keep him around. There were plenty of people in the first one that haven't been seen in Manhattan...and on some level, even if it's been rough being alone, Megumi really doesn't want Yuji to have to deal with this bullshit anyway. ]

[hallowedly]

( No family, no true friends, no relations. Truly, a serial killer's wet dream, if only Seishirou allowed himself that indulgence or distraction. The likely paranoid isolation of most inhabitants has some potential. Together, people become flocks, irrational and slow and drowsy. Terror and individuality keep men alert.

As for children, well. Seishriou can only melt his mouth in a fragile smile again. )

I'm sorry. That sounds lonely. ( Young people, he remembers, like routine and company, benefitting from systems. Chaos overwhelms. )

But you have your little canine friend, at least. I'm happy to check him for any troubles later, if you'd like. ( It has been some time since he's taken notes on rival shikigami. )

[potentialman]

He doesn't really...get those problems.

[ Thankfully. He's not sure how exactly they would've handled getting someone to look over a normally invisible, selectively intangible dog. Maybe there's a vet among the windows? If not, that would've been a fun conundrum. ]

[hallowedly]

...oh. Self-attending, is he?

( As any shikigami worth his salt and his summon ought to be, prone to either reset or rejuvenation. Strange, to think of a world where the rules run different. Luckily, no such existential crisis in bloom.

Seishirou can sustain his smile and slowly, carefully, start to steer them down the corridor by picking up his own pace. )

Well, do tell him no to teach all the others his tricks. I'm afraid he'll run me out of a job! ( A veterinarian at world's end being as prized of a commodity as a gun without bullets. But far from Seishirou to circulate his own professional downfall. He stills, fleetingly, mouth trapped in feebly downturn, as if it's only now occurred to him: )

Are they... good people, the others who came with you?

[potentialman]

[ Kuro falls easily into step on his left, close enough to brush against his waist. ]

Mostly, I'd say? [ What a broad question. ] Some are perfect examples of good people, some...probably less so, but just about everybody has had the sense to realize that cooperation is in all of our best interests.

[ They have more than enough to worry about without wasting time on petty disputes and shitting where they metaphorically eat. ]

[hallowedly]

I'd never take that as a given.

( Cooperation, mutual survival, the benefits of the sum exceeding those of the parts. There're assumptions inherent to that thinking born of a willingness to bend, sooner than break. Children will be children in this, incapacitated by principles of dignity, heroism and pride, sooner than the base instinct for survival. Time dulls their light to desaturation.

Seishirou, at times, helps.

Now, he is making room for the shikigami, careful to remove the blacks of his overcoat and strand it over his arm, where, waterlogged but strategically folded, it covers what scant traces of his own blood the dark of the cloth had yet to shelter. A shikigami's nose is a carefully refined, polished instrument. )

People can be self-serving and narrow-minded. Selfishness is uncomplicated. Duress doesn't often bring out the best in men.

[potentialman]

I know that. [ As anyone who's been a jujutsu sorcerer for longer than five minutes should. ] But nobody's jumped straight to being an asshole, so we've been managing okay.

[ Quite possibly they've got the Murmur to thank for that, in part, to force some empathy on the people who might lack it. At least, Megumi suspects as much, but they don't seem to have picked up any true black holes of human morality.

(Yet.) ]

[hallowedly]

I'm relieved. You wouldn't believe how... catty veterinarian work can get.

( Oh, no. But he's embraced it, mouth breaking toothily in a splintered, bashful grin, like every man who measures his worth in the weight of his puns. Hell hath no fury like a middle-aged man in the prime of his dad jokes, with the glistening denture to brandish and thoroughly weaponize.

Truly, Fushiguro Megumi must have sinned in his life to deserve this, of all outcomes. )

But you sound as if you know your way around. Let's put ourselves in each other's care.

[potentialman]

[ Oh, no. No. Why this.

Megumi nobly refrains from groaning out loud, and keeps a fairly straight face, but fails to suppress his twitch. ]

Yeah, sure. We can do that.

[ But can they just...do that without the dad jokes. Please. ]