[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]

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.]