in the middle of summer [ OPEN MINGLE ]

[postictal]

Who: Anyone!
What: Catch-all Denny mingle for the last week or so of July
When: Anytime between July 25th and July 31st
Where: Denny
Warnings: Label your stuff if it comes up



[Feel free to use this as a catch-all for whatever your character might conceivably be doing here. Are they loitering outside? Delivering supplies/food? Helping improve the place because god it certainly needs it? Cooking? Socializing? Eating? Just wanting to booze it up? GO WILD.]

[There are nominal rules but if you don't get caught you don't have to deal with them, so you do you.]

Comments

[vagabone]

[...fine, he'll let it go. It doesn't really matter. This place is a freakshow, that's just how it is.]

Okay, okay, you're human. I believe you.

So... where were we?

[braceforimpact]

[Yeah, that's right. How dare you question his status as something he's outright told a weird robot he isn't.]

Oh, it's called the Denny.

[And they're still there, in fact.]

[vagabone]

[Kaworu has earned himself a flat, unamused stare.]

I meant what were we talking about. It's a figure of speech.

[braceforimpact]

You really keep assuming I know what you mean.

[You know. Not like he had a lot of time for learning idiomatic speech, in the weeks of being alive he's had.]

But we're not the same. You can't be surprised if I get confused.

[vagabone]

[He's being unfair again, Héctor realizes. It's not that uncommon for someone to not be totally fluent in Spanish. (Shh, shh, don't tell him about the magic translation effect.)]

I guess we're not. [He says it grudgingly.] I was human when I was alive, though. It counts.

[braceforimpact]

[RECORD SCRATCH--]

.........when you were alive? What does that mean? How are you not alive.

[Kaworu is suddenly sounding really cranky.]

[vagabone]

[Immediately he feels the urge to beat his head on the table until it falls off. Wonder why.]

I died, kid. I'm dead. No longer alive.

Deceased. For almost a century.

[braceforimpact]

You're alive.

[Kaworu isn't sure how things like this keep happening, conversations that occur in the face of obvious facts.]

[vagabone]

[He throws his arms up in the air, so overdramatic--]

I'm a skeleton! I'm dead!

[braceforimpact]

You're human. You're alive.

[What is this guy even saying? Yes, you're a skeleton, Hector. He knows what the human skeleton looks like. That's not even related.]

[vagabone]

I'm human and I'm dead! Look at me, I'm all bones!

[Dios mío, what is wrong with this guy. What is going on.]

I died. I woke up as a skeleton in the land of the dead. Like everyone else who died.

[braceforimpact]

[Kaworu has taken a lot of things at face value in his short life. Most things, in fact. 'Magic' and human nature and the face of God... these are all things he accepts implicitly, because he must.

But Hector, he knows how death works.]

Are you telling me your soul was salvaged?

[This is the only explanation he can think of, and his brow furrows in thought and mild disbelief--not that it's impossible, far from it, but that he cannot understand who would salvage a bunch of souls to such a shoddy body?]

[vagabone]

I have no idea what you mean. Maybe?

[Okay, Héctor, calm down and try to explain it a little better.]

This is what happens to everyone who dies, like I said. There's a whole world, a spirit world for the dead, that living people can't see. Normally. And that's where I came from.

[braceforimpact]

[Uhhhhhh.

Now you're being confusing and wrong at the same time.]

That doesn't even make sense.

[vagabone]

[Excuse you, Kaworu, who's the expert on being dead here??]

What about it doesn't make sense?

[braceforimpact]

Everything. A world that living people can't see?

A soul doesn't take a new form after death unless you salvage it into one, it's unnatural.

[Kaworu himself is a salvaged soul, actually. He would know.]

No wonder you're falling apart.

[vagabone]

[Aaand he's sputtering. This is why we can't have nice things.]

What--I'm not--Skeleton! We're supposed to come apart! It's normal!

[Call him unnatural all you want, but he is not falling apart, he's fine. He doesn't walk funny, Miguel, stop it!]

[braceforimpact]

[Kaworu remains visibly unimpressed.

He doesn't even retort; he just stares Hector down in silence, making stubborn eye contact.]

[vagabone]

[Talk about unimpressed looks... he props up his chin, elbow on the table, and stares right back at the weirdo.]

What? I'm not going anywhere, you can't stare me away.

[braceforimpact]

...what?

[Kaworu falters visibly. Is that something that happens? You stare at someone and they go away?

Isn't that... the opposite of what eye contact is for?]

[vagabone]

[Yeah, he's not the weirdest thing in the room right now.]

Look, everything I said is true, so you can start blinking again. Why would I lie about being dead? Why would anyone?

[braceforimpact]

Why do humans lie?

[Kaworu repeats it back to Hector not as an actual question but as the obvious staging of a rhetorical. A rhetorical he's about to answer for him.]

It's because the human ego is so fragile. Lilim needs others like it to survive, but it will also hurt itself because of the barriers that separate individuals... that is why humans must lie to each other, and to themselves, in order to coexist with each other.

[See? He's not so stupid, Hector.]

[vagabone]

[If Kaworu's speech isn't completely memorized, he'll eat his precious hat. The poor guy's brainwashed or something, and suddenly he's not so annoyed.]

...You have no idea what any of that means, do you. At least I know what I'm talking about.

[braceforimpact]

I know what I'm talking about!

[Kaworu is irked. But Hector is half right; Kaworu doesn't have much worldly knowledge that isn't SEELE's dictum. And the way Kaworu talks is a direct mirror of their arcane, religiously-dictated script. But he knows what it means. He wouldn't have said it if he didn't.]

You don't like it because it's true.

[vagabone]

Yeah, right. That sounded rehearsed. And what's Lilim?

[Oh, he's going to regret that question, he can feel it. Every time he opens his big mouth and asks another damn question, Enso's castaways tell him something nightmare worthy, or so it seems.]

Forget it. I'm dead, that's just how it is. I should be in the land of the dead where I belong, in my own home, but I'm not.