nightlogs | XOXO ❅ VALENTINE'S EVENT

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XOXO ❅ VALENTINE'S EVENT

XOXO

One major problem with being the group that's responsible for solving all kinds of problems in the myth world is other myths can kind of be dicks about it. That's why, on Valentine's Day, Cupid shows up, quickly offloads his kid (the toddler Baby Cupid), and runs off to take care of spreading love on his holiday, with barely a how'd you do. He doesn't even say thank you.

To be fair, you can't fault him too much for only trusting the Guardians to babysit his kid in these dangerous and uncertain times, especially when children at risk against the fearlings.

Still, that means there's a giggling toddler, about 2-years-old in appearance, but maybe with the mental age of a 4 or 5 (he is definitely old enough to understand he's being naughty and deserving of a time out) flitting around the Pole causing all kinds of Valentine's related problems. Fortunately, the toddler has learned that he's not quite old enough to know the right times to help people fall in love (Adult Cupid just helps things along when they're already falling, or when they need help falling back in love, of course).

Instead, Baby C is doing what his father taught him to do and causing all kinds of tricks to try to get people to admit feelings that already exist or manufacturing ways for them to become closer to each other.

HONESTY ARROWS ♥ Baby Cupid isn't shooting magic arrows that cause anyone to develop feelings for each other but he sure is trying to make sure people talk about whatever feelings they have. Anyone hit will be compelled to blurt out various truths about themselves, their personal history, and their feelings to whoever is around them and will have difficulty stopping or drawing themselves away. In fact, if someone walks away they'll feel compelled to find someone else to confess to. The effect wears off anywhere between 5 minutes to a half hour.

TATTLETALE ROSES ♥ Vines of roses are now growing all over the Workshop. For those who are in love, they take the form of the face of the person they're in love with. The more they try to hide it or deny it from someone they're talking to, the more of them bloom with the person's face.

THORNY VINES OF CLOSENESS ♥ The rose vines have their own annoying purpose: bonding! For people that clearly need to become friends, fall in love, or fall deeper in love, thorny vines will wrap around both people, forcing them into a little cage together. The thorns fortunately won't poke them - they seem to be maneuvered in a way to just make sure there are no gaps to escape through. The vines are magically reinforced and can't be opened with any physical or magical means. After that, one of two things will happen:

1) A card will fall from the ceiling of the cage saying: Tell each other how you really feel about each other!!! This will happen if the cage thinks they need to affirm the status of their relationship, whether they need to admit they're in love, admit they've been bitten by the friend bug if they're reluctant to, or really need to talk about how much they mean to each other as friends. Only then will they be let out of the feelings shame corner.

2) If the two don't know each other, or both people could afford to get to know each other better multiple cards will drop from the ceiling with icebreaker questions, as if they're a bunch of new hires at an orientation.

How many will they have to answer before they're released? Who knows! But they have to answer them honestly or the cage won't open.

CANDY LONELY HEARTS ♥ People who are on the lonelier side and in need of support might find a candy heart on a random surface. The messages on them are on the platonic side (Like "You rock!" or "Shine on!") They'll feel compelled to eat them (even if they're on the floor). When they do, a glowing red thread will appear and tie itself around their finger. Briefly, in the air, the glowing string will form into letters that tell the person what they need to do to be release, whether it's telling someone they're lonely, asking for some kind of support, or admitting a vulnerability.

Then it'll whip out and grab someone else nearby, wrapping around their finger as well. Sometimes, two people might eat a candy at the same time and each have a string appear and they'll tie in the middle.

The strings are unbreakable, and they won't be set free until whoever ate a candy talks about their loneliness or vulnerable feelings - regardless of whether or not the other person is an eager listener.

OOC DETAILS
❅ Starters: You can make up your own wildcard effects, feel free! If you do, please consider posting it to the Wildcard comment below so others might be able to pick up the same effect as well if they like them.

❅ Multiple effects: Feel free to have characters slammed by as many of Baby C's traps in the same thread as you want. No reason someone can't have the worst luck and trip three Cupid traps at once or several of them in a row.

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Stacia, given her feminine makeup and tendency to dress in cute clothes with floral motifs, looks particularly unlike someone who'd survive by herself in the wild. She does it on purpose: because she likes dressing and presenting herself this way, because she can dress and present herself this way, because everyone around her back home pulls off the intimidating-flannel-and-leather look better than she would, and because all the big scary people in flannel and leather do what she says. Garurumon doesn't have that context though, so she just laughs.

"Right?!" she says, spreading her hands wide and grinning. "I'm pretty sure everyone involved thought I wouldn't do it either. Suckers. I should have made them put money on it."

She lowers her hands, the empty one resting on her hip for lack of anything else to do with it. "Your turn: What weird things have you eaten, and would you eat them again? Feel free to define 'weird' however you like."

"Apparently I have the antibodies."

Jake sighs, gesturing vaguely.

"Turns out it's not the first time someone tried to take over the world like this, and that one of those responsible is none other than my deadbeat dad. Never met him, thought he'd just left me, instead he's a genocidal maniac or something."

He does a mouth shrug, feeling some form of disgust for himself. Jake has learned to be crass and humorous about the messed up things he sees, so it's very rare to see him express sadness.

"I guess that me leading my kind of life makes sense."

"Oh, you know, it's one of those façades you gotta put on to survive, I'd rather be tough and laugh at everything because if I have to start crying or thinking about how I feel I might as well check into a hospital or the morgue directly."

He audibly facepalms.

"No way I just said that shit out loud."

Dan smiles. It's a gentle smile, a your secret is safe with me smile, even though they've just met. Dan's not going to be the person to spread around that which people would rather keep under wraps.

"Want me to show you around and see if we can't could find you a better place for yourself here at the Pole? I know this place well." Dan had the benefit of living in a world very similar to this, Bunny's world, with the Guardians. He visited the Pole regularly. "After we find this miscreant."

Because so far no devastating secrets seem to have emerged, but Dan would rather not be compelled to blurt out confessions, and he's sure no one else would either.

"That's kind of you. We're all dumb enough to eat candy off the floor, so we probably ain't going to do too hot on figuring out how to get free." That's a lie. Dan's been tied up many times and in many contexts, and he already knows how he's going to wiggle and contort loose from this. He just doesn't feel any pressing need to do so right now.

He raises an eyebrow. "The periodic table? Uh...well, I ain't never seen it, but I assume it's old and valuable."

He's clueless. He wonders how something so random could end up in that red writing above him.

Animal-based powers...it makes Taylor wonder if hers would count enough. It allows her to control bugs and crustaceans, but it doesn't give her animal traits, does it? Or perhaps it's enough for the Easter Bunny to smell it on her?

Unbeknown to Taylor, her power has enough oddities to raise an alarm or two. She's not aware Miguel's senses can pick hers up, and vice versa.

"Not sure a trustworthy person calls themselves that, but I guess that'd be harder to hide during this day."

The strings, the arrows, something would reveal it. Still...

"You know what, fine. Let's see if that's enough for the strings. I'll try to let my guard down and believe everything you just said."

Easier said than done, and Taylor does take a deep breath as if to prepare, but it's really, really hard for her. The string around her finger loosens up, not falling down, but hey, it's far better than how it was before. Taylor did try, she just has a tremendously hard time not worrying about things.

"Who am I to judge? I have done plenty of dumb things before." Taylor laughs a litle. Taylor sure will experience the wonders of candy-eating, if she hasn't already, but even without that she probably would hold off on judging anyone for this. She's not the wisest person in the planet, after all!

"This is going to be the easiest one yet."

Without even asking if he wants to find out what such a concept is, she immediately comes up with a way to explain it.

"The periodic table is just a way chemists came up to put the names of everything that forms the things in the planet into groups instead of in one long list."

That's the most simplistic explanation she could think of, and it doesn't even go into detail about groups and things, but she tried! It's not like she's wrong! Her eyes flick up, to see if that somehow fulfilled the strings' demands, like she was answering some sort of riddle where the grand prize is freeing Dan from the clutches of his own ignorance.

Oh. So this is a religious thing. Something in Dan feels so relieved to know that it's not that he's missing a major piece of information that affects his world, but that "the solar system" is a tenet of the faith that a bunch of people have that there was a Big Bang. Dan bets Boimler also believes in evolution and dinosaurs and all those sorts of things.

Dan isn't religious anymore. He was raised on a diet of Bible stories and isolation, and his faith was always casual, a result of his life circumstances rather than any genuine piety. Losing his religion was easy; he thinks of Christianity as like a local accent he picked up from proximity to true believers, his parents, and then something that flaked off him when he was without them. It's something that makes him feel wistful, but not sad. Sometimes he prays still, but he isn't expecting anyone to be listening, and that expectation doesn't make him feel any sort of emptiness or abandonment.

But he's seen how important faith was to his parents, and he's seen it many times in his travels with humans and monsters and ghosts, the way belief is so sincerely-held and precious to some people, and far be it for Dan to correct Boimler on matters of spirituality. If Boimler believes in the Big Bang, Dan will respect that.

"Ah, alright, I think- well, where I'm from the world is flat." That doesn't sound like challenging Boimler's beliefs, he doesn't think. He's couching it as his own world. "Otherwise we'd fall off."

"I'm pretty sure anything I mention will mean nothing to you. The Kemonogami world is nothing like the human world."

A little presumptuous of a thing to say since clearly the worlds, even though they all count as 'human worlds', are all so different from each other. Garurumon seems a little bit embarrassed of what he'll say.

"There are crystals that make us Kemonogami stronger. You just have to crush them or something, to get yourself the energy from it. When I was younger and had just been a few days in my Rookie stage, I found one to enhance stamina. I had no idea what to do with it, so I...I began munching on it. Cracked a tooth or two on that before giving up."

There's a pause and he adds, raising his voice a little.

"Before you ask, no, I wouldn't eat that again! Or fail to eat it, whatever!"

See, it's for reasons like those that Garurumon is finding he tolerates the people around here more than he wanted to admit. They have been turning out...far more considerate and thoughtful than the one human he hates. It really seems as if virtually all humans he has met other than his former partner are likable, with Jake being as a minor exception.

"Look at me for more than two seconds. I'm not some puppy that'll fit under a bed, you know."

Garurumon is seriously underestimating how much space there might be at the bedrooms themselves. True, he's a sizable beast because he being a quadruped means he takes a lot of space, but it's not going to be so much he's a burden -- yet he really seems to underestimate that.

"But fine. I won't turn you away if you insist. Come on, there's a little rascal to hunt down."

Use a verb that isn't as strong as 'hunt down', Garurumon.

TATTLETALE ROSES.

[ Aziraphale would like to speak with a manager. Oh. He supposes Cupid is the manager, in a roundabout way. Not strictly available. Not especially helpful just now, then.

Which is to say it's all fun and games and trying to dodge arrows until the rose vines start growing in around him, with the sort of alarming numbers that come from thousands of years of denial and repression and all that.

To anyone who's seen Aziraphale out and about on missions or at the Pole since first arriving, and the most regular company he keeps, the face on the roses is likely very familiar. ]

Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, no.

[ Old habits win out most of the time with Aziraphale, and the old habit that comes to the forefront in the moment is mild panic. Heaven and Hell aren't in this reality in the strictest sense, at least not in the forms that would be the most concerning, but-- well, who's to say, really. Heaven observes. It's what they do. Anything is possible.

What if they see? But even after that initial burst of panic settles, looks frankly irrational all things considered, he has to consider: what if literally anyone else here sees and then tells Crowley about it?

Good Lord, what if Crowley sees these? Can't have that.

Local angel can be found... basically anywhere, fruitlessly trying to prune and redirect the rose vines putting him on blast, not really thinking about how that's a metaphor for basically his entire existence. It only seems to keep getting worse, though? Nothing is working, can't believe the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone ever is happening to him, personally, etc. ]

VINES OF CLOSENESS.

[ He takes it back. This is actually the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone ever, happening to him personally.

Aziraphale, on his end of this cramped little thorn cage, could not be more clearly exuding an energy of "I hate every single thing about this but god help me I'm trying to swallow that hatred to be polite." Look, he loves people. Generally. Conceptually. He loves learning about them.

But he's also an introvert who really rather prefers to engage with that sort of thing on his own terms. This is the nightmare scenario. ]

Right. Um. Hello. [ World's most short-lived strained smile contender: activate.

He gathers up a handful of icebreaker cards, fishes out a little pair of reading glasses, and starts rifling through questions. The glasses seem to have no real impact on how much squinting is required.

Aziraphale stops on one that seems to nab the bulk of his attention and frowns. ]

I don't suppose you could tell me what an "emoji" is. [ He technically speaks every language and is an avid reader, and yet... emoji... tf. ]

WILDCARD.

[ For everything under the sun. Open to playing with honesty arrows, candy hearts, other misc. wildcard options, planning closed threads, whatever! Feel free to hit me for plotting! ]

[Boimler is still feeling awfully yanked around. He looks sulky as he follows and when they finally come to a stop in an empty room he flops down into one of the chairs, turning himself into a human anchor.]

What message did yours give you?

[So they know what magical bullshit requirements they have to each meet.]

We're not going to get around having to do what the strings say. I already got caught with some other people and tried to analyze it for a weakness.

Scientifically speaking, the string is made of [he breaks off into a vague hand gesture and a shrug.]

[It's made of shrug. That's what it's made of.]

Hitting it with a phaser didn't do anything to it and it can't be physically broken.

[ gingerly avoiding the first question, Miguel slumps down next to him with the expected creak of rustled chair legs. The mask blinks away with a thought, feeling a little more private in a sequestered room. How on earth should he even start? ]

Yes, I've noticed that.

[ The red thread gets plucked like a guitar string by a curved talon. It does not fray at all from the sharpness or the friction. They were well and truly Stuck Together. ]

You've been trapped more than once. Did your string say the same thing each time?

[Air quotes.]

"Share your insecurities and make a new friend."

[He rolls his eyes at the corniness of it because even he, a cornily idealistic Starfleet officer, still has his limits on things that are twee.]

Every time.

Edited 2024-03-01 08:45 (UTC)

Mine was similar.

[ a vague admission. He omits the part where the thread encouraged him to open up about his feelings. What a horrifying concept.

And to do it with Boimler? Well, he supposes it could be worse. ]

Doesn’t fighting the same ancient evil count as friendship? It feels fairly close.

That is...not even remotely close, no. [Boimler, an awkward person but still a haver of some friends and friendly acquaintances, turns to raise an eyebrow at him.] That's a shared mission. I have shared missions with guys I can't stand all the time. You still just shove it aside and do the mission.

[And then there are friends, who you play Klingon tabletop games with and play pretend with on the holodeck.]

Friends can be insufferable if they want to be. That’s part of the package.

[ he sighs, the big shoulders slumping a bit. His one friend he felt he could really count on was an AI he made himself. What does that say about him? ]

Maybe it just got complicated once there’s a hierarchy, even if it’s a loose one. You have to conduct yourself with a certain face.

[ excuses, excuses…]

Yeeeeah, but also there's free time, right? Where you can relax a little?

[He looks over at him curiously.]

I don't how know it works with superhero...ism...stuff. But don't you ever have downtime?

I can't believe I'm the one saying this but sometimes it's good to have some time you're not worrying about looking professional.

...There's no other hub of the multiverse sitting around, patching up holes if I decide to go on vacation.

[ Superhero stuff trampling all over your personal life is part of the deal for Spiderpeople, but especially for Miguel, who doesn't have much of a personal life to begin with.

He waves his hand around dismissively. ]

You don't have to worry about it. It's not like I get exhausted the same way an unmodified human would.

[ he's very good at hiding it. ]

[Unbelievable. This guy.]

I don't mean a vacation. I mean a few off-duty hours each day. Back on board the Cerritos, it'd just be a half hour to have a drink. An hour or two in the holodeck.

[Emphasis.] With friends.

It's not like we leave the ship if we're not on leave, so we're always still right there if there's a red alert.

[Boimler looks thoughtful. He's not always the most caring or gentle person. He cares but he's not always good at empathizing or extending a kindness.]

[But there's something about this that's at least a little bit familiar.]

[And something a little sad about someone who clearly cares about helping and protecting the dimensional fabric not really seeming to have connections.]

You know, at one point all I cared about was work. In my case, I wasn't trying to save the...universes, I was just trying to get promoted, but still, other people weren't much of a priority. At least socially.

[Or even worse, he saw them as a hurdle, worth throwing under the bus to advance, like when he almost narced on Mariner just for a chance to impress Captain Freeman, over Mariner's genuinely benevolent extracurriculars that cut past Starfleet red tape to help people.]

But it wasn't until I started to make room for them that I started to feel like - like I'm actually getting closer to...whatever it is I'm trying to be.

[Something better.]

Sometimes you need to make room for some good influences. [A pause, as he considers Mariner's...everything.] Or bad ones helping you shake things up a little.

[ Tim just. Looks at him. ]

What are you talking about? Santa's already one of the most badass metahumans the multiverse has ever seen, if not the badass.

No, but that doesn't exactly make me feel better either. Magic doesn't have to hurt to hurt.

[ Obviously. Tim still rubs at the spot it had hit though, because it feels... different. ]

I need to find a butterfly net and about 3 pack n' plays.

[ He's immediately digging his heels at the suggestion that he go to bed and rest when there's a tiny Cupid taking potshots at the them. ]

I'm not tired. I'm tired of wondering what nonsense is going to be thrown at me and maybe tired of people acting like I have to be kept safe, but I'm not going to go sit in my room and let you tell Kon that I need someone to play nurse. I'm fine. I just have to capture Cupid: this is normal.

[ No matter who saw him get shot, it was never not going to be weird. But Loki?

Trebly weird. Tim keeps his eyes shut and shakes his head. ]

No, and yes. Cupid's arrows are either tipped with gold or lead. Golden arrows induce desire, lead trigger a flight response. No offense meant, but I do not want to deal with a 50/50 chance to play Apollo to my ex's alt's Daphne.

[Loki pauses, working that out, then smiles slyly. Not that Tim can see it.]

Ex, hm? I hope there are no hard feelings.

So, the effect triggers on the first person you see? Then perhaps I can dispell it before you open your eyes. If I may?

[Like he's going to wait for permission to at least study whatever magic's hanging around Tim.]

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XOXO ❅ VALENTINE'S EVENT

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aziraphale | ota

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