[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

Comments

[splinten]

[Again: What.]

What.

Uh... I don't think so.

[HE. IS VERY UNSURE NOW THOUGH. Is he accidentally dating Minato????????]

[p_mortem]

[ He meant talking seven times before they get to the dating stage!! But you know what? He will roll with this too. ]

Isn't it? The first time was after the battle. Breakfast in bed.

[ Or something like that; he was too groggy to know what time of day it was when he finally woke up, or what sort of food was being shoved at him. But there is literally no escape from here and now, unless Dirk destroys the chair. ]

[splinten]

[Dirk stares at Minato.]

No. [He picks up a paper, reads it, and asks what is CLEARLY ON THE PAPER:] Why do you have multiple souls inside you?

[p_mortem]

That-

[ The question catches Minato off-guard, and the smile on his face evaporates instantly. The only ones who could tell what he housed in him were other Persona users, he thought, but he can't sense anything like that from Dirk.

The way the question is phrased makes it sound as if it's something he shouldn't have (he shouldn't. not only because it isn't normal, but also because it's something that was something that was forced upon him and he'd grown into it, not something that came through choice. ]

...is a seventh date question. You're able to tell?

[splinten]

[Minato doesn't deserve this.]

Keeping an eye on souls and their weirdass life choices is apparently part of my job description these days.

[Honestly, the monotone is more vaguely irritated at how he has to be a human soul detector than genuinely bothered, but he does think Minato has something weird going on. In Madoka's case, it was dangerous. Now at least he knows Minato already knew what was going on.]

If you don't want to talk about it, it's cool. Weird as fuck, but it's your collection of souls. On the other hand, I'm willing to help how I can if it's some kind of problem. My universe made me for managing that particular aspect of reality, and I guess this is probably what that means.

[p_mortem]

[ What weirder life choices is there than literally collecting souls, as if they were baseball cards. Minato notes, vaguely, that Dirk's power involves destruction— if anything, his souls are helping him more than harming, lending him strength under a contract of mutual interests. So long as he is strong enough to control all of them, more and more and stronger and stronger as he collects them, it should not be a problem.

...If it does become a problem, people have almost died from it, and he's sure Dirk wouldn't be satisfied with that caveat. ]

It's not hard to talk about. Just difficult to explain. So long as I remain in control of them, they won't rampage. It hasn't been a problem.

[splinten]

[a pause]

Ok, I respect that, but you know you just put a conditional on them not rampaging, right.

[p_mortem]

Yeah.

[ He can't really explain that condition, though, whether it involves strength of mind or strength or heart or something else entirely. ]

If that happens... I don't want them destroyed, if possible. If that's how you mean to help.

[splinten]

I'm not good for only that. [There's a slight defensive tone, and more than that: a hint that he isn't totally sure of it. That he thinks maybe it is all he's good for. Despite that, he presses on.] I can also contain souls and shove them into objects for later retrieval. On top of that, I've worked out how to erase some kind of corruption from souls. As dominant as it might appear, 'burn that motherfucker to the ground' isn't my only skillset.

[Or at least he wants that. He craves being more than a God of destruction and a human who ruins everything he encounters. He doesn't know if he believes in it.]

[p_mortem]

[ It wasn't fair of Minato to suggest that, but he can't take back his words. If anything, the expansion of Dirk's soul abilities is more unsettling than simply destruction: containing souls and healing them are a bit out of the range of Minato's comprehension. He casts his eyes down, looking inside. Not at the dozens of souls that pulse within him, but for his own soul. It's somewhere in there, he thinks, even if he can't feel anything about it. ]

Can you see my soul? Whether it's alright?

[ It should be fine. There's nothing he's ever run into with the power to corrupt the soul, but his thoughts turn to heartbreak, to when his parents died ten years ago and he had completely shut down emotionally after that. People would tell him that his affect isn't quite right. How could that not corrupt a soul? ]

[splinten]

[He can sense there's more behind it. Maybe even a mirror of his own anxieties. There's something wrong with me. Dirk knows it, Dirk feels it in his bones, something distorted and sick, a terrible consciousness of his own broken personality. 'A heartless motherfucker.' All his friends' robot jokes swarm around his thoughts.

He doesn't know if he can give peace of mind to Minato. He knew that Madoka's soul was corrupted, but that was a cost of using magic. That sickness was a damage that came with the consequence of her deal. For Minato...]

If you put aside the multitude of swarming and attached essences of being, it's as okay as any other soul I've seen.

[p_mortem]

...I see.

[ Should he be comforted or discouraged at that? He doesn't know. Having Dirk 'fix' any corruption would have been the easy way out, and he isn't sure he would be satisfied with that, even if that would allow him to smile as widely or laugh as loudly as when he was a child. There's no quick fix, but it also means that he has the power to fix it himself: he's not the only person in the world who have lost their parents, their home, forced to face death time and time again. He will overcome this too.

It's the 10th comment, so the next person in line is already edging him out of his seat. Minato grabs whatever bread is leftover from Dirk's table while he still has the chance. ]

Thanks, Dirk. I'll talk to you on another date.

[ Day? Date. ]

[splinten]

[And so, before Dirk can reply, he is ZOOMED AWAY!!!!!!!

Minato you harlot.]