middaeg | Greetings always followed by sweet goodbyes [Open]

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Greetings always followed by sweet goodbyes [Open]

Who: Majima Gorō and OPEN
When: June!
Where: Everywhere!
What: Giant chickens, runework, plus quests and basically a monthly catch-all.
Warnings: Violence in the sunbear fight thread. Salty language, maybe.

A: I'll call you Nugget

[ Whoever had said 'don't go borrowing trouble' had been a smart guy, a wise man indeed, but the thing about being told you could potentially learn to transform yourself into a totally rad magic animal was that Majima wanted to do it immediately. So it was a quiet day in the Haven, sure -- up until, with a brilliant burst of magical fireworks, a giant, six-foot tall feathery menace descended upon one of the courtyards, stalking through the garden. ]

Fuck.

[ Someone get an adult. ]

B: Runetchers

[ Majima looked up when the shop door opened. It was a slow day, which meant he'd been making progress with the pile of scrolls and other orders for enchanted items. It also meant that his fingers were cramped, and a little distraction couldn't hurt. ]

Hi there, welcome to Runetchers.

[ He stood, gave the potential customer a little bow in a show of impeccable good manners. ]

Are you lookin' for anything in particular?

Research Required (For Justine)

Oh, I... yeah. Is there any way we could skip that part?

[ Apparently, no one had told Majima that this particular research was going to require Bonding. Hey, don't get him wrong -- connections were important, and so was emotional support? But getting himself magically attached to someone when he still hadn't made peace with the idea of sticking around long-term didn't really strike him as the best of ideas.

...especially since he wasn't sure if he wanted to get un- magically attached. He looked around for a friendly face, wondering how the hell he was going to bullshit his way out of this one. ]

Pastoral Pursuit (For Iramaat)

Hey, uh. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your ears.

[ Look, maybe while they were wandering out into the woods looking for some stray sheep was not the best time to bring this up? But hey, Iramaat's ears had been kind of cool, and she knew how to nab foxes, and Majima knew if he'd had to give up one of his favorite features, he'd be pretty pissed about it.

With no outward signs of change, it was fairly obvious what side of the monster-witch coin that Majima had ended up on. He climbed over a fallen tree trunk, careful not to stave in its soft trunk. ]

Wildcard

Feel free to hit me up via Tetradecimal or PM for plotting!

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[That's quite the impressive chicken.

But, also, why is there a chicken.

The gardens outside the abandoned mansion Kaede supposed she (and...others?) lived in now were still in a state of neglected disarray, but Kaede had at least wanted to fix a little of that and wanted to get it right first. So she'd been tending to a small corner, tucked away mostly out of sight of the main house; the plot had just a few daylilies and marigolds, gifts from the gardening class. And some of the rows were crooked, but that was background information to a whole ass rooster that had appeared over the wall.

Quite a bit bigger than that, really. But its appearance was so sudden that Kaede started back, kicking over a bag of soil as she stood. Her horns were longer than when she'd met Majima last;--almost twice as long, with a little antlerlike fork starting on the left one. And her posture was still hunched over, but that might just have been because Kaede was Alarmed yet undecided if she wanted to be defensive or to run off yet.]

What was that?

[Did...it just talk? Or was she just imagining its squawk sounding like a word?]

[ Was is possible for a chicken to break into a cold sweat? Because that sure was how Majima felt at the moment, registering Kaede's face before her horns. ]

Uh...

B-kawk.

[ When in doubt, do an incredibly terribly job of pretending to be a normal chicken, right? Goddamn, when was this spell going to run out? Maybe he should just come clean.

Or maybe he'd just kind of... guiltily make pecking motions at the ground. Sorry to disturb... ]

[Okay, it was...sort of acting like a chicken? Kaede had still never seen an Actual Legitimate Chicken in person, just an irritable cockatrice. Was this another of the magic animals running around, too? This...whatever it was seemed nervous, though. Which also seemed silly, given Kaede was quite a bit smaller than it even without the feathers.

It pecked at the ground near where she had planted some of the flowers, and Kaede made up her mind finally. With a scowl she started forwards, raising her claw-tipped hands.]

Hey, don't knock those over.

[She's going to shove the chicken.]

Ow, hey! What's with the animal cruelty?

[ Kaede truly was the real monster here. Majima, unused to balancing in his new form, had to flap to keep upright, and sort of had to hustle a little ways away like when you dropped a chicken in Breath of the Wild.

Okay, chicken cover blown. ]

I see you're feelin' better.

[Look. Look. She'd worked hard with those flowers, okay. Kaede's hands sank through the chicken's neck fluff up to her wrists before she got anywhere near its torso, but that didn't deter her. Even when she had to turn her head to avoid being buffeted by the rooster's flailing wings.

What she was put off balance by was when the chicken started talking. Actually talking, not suspiciously articulated clucking. And in...a familiar voice?

Kaede jumped backwards, squashing one end of the (empty) row flat against the ground again.]

...Majima?

[That was what his name had been, right? She thought so.

He wasn't a chicken then, so she might be mistaken.]

That's me.

[ There was practically as much fluffy feather as there was chicken. When he turned to look at her, Majima's left eye was still shut. ]

Nice little garden ya got goin', here. I didn't know you were around.

[The compliment put her further off balance, and she lapsed into a long quiet moment where Kaede scrabbled for an answer. Eventually, she just...scuffed her foot in the dirt and mumbled something.]

A lot of people don't realize there's someone living in that house.

[She glanced up at it; a sizable mansion though it was, it was clearly in need of some upkeep and repair. It still looked abandoned, unless someone walked by at the right time to see a light go on in a window.

...which probably just made it look haunted instead. One or the other.

Anyway--onto the important things.]

Why are you a chicken?

Uh... run of bad cluck?

[ Look, don't ask him these things. In fact, maybe don't look at him, he was a giant chicken and this situation was ridiculous, and he knew it. ]

I was practicin' some transfiguration and things went a little sideways. I guess it could've been worse.

At least I'm full chicken.

[ God if he'd turned into some kind of werechicken or reverse mermaid chicken, the nightmare would be real. ]

...want some help?

[She wasn't going to judge him for making a cock of himself (his tail was pretty!), though Kaede did stare at him at the pun. Really.]

Didn't know you could do that.

[She started itching at her wrist without looking at it--carefully, very carefully. There were blotches of what seemed to be dark red freckles on the top, though they didn't seem to be freckles at all. Some were trying to turn into tiny quills, or...pinfeathers? something, Kaede wasn't sure. What she was sure of is that they itched.

But then she stopped mid-scratch, blinking at him.]

Help with what?

Your work. You're tryin' to get everything into shape, right?

[ And maybe it'd be a good opportunity to catch up on things. It'd been a while since he'd talked to Kaede, after all. ]

If it's eating bugs, though, that's gonna be a hard no. I only look like a chicken.

[Kaede snorted at the thought; even if he were a chicken, those would have to be equally enormous bugs. And then she'd have other things to worry about.

As it was, though, she just...scuffed her foot in the dirt again, glancing at the plants. It was basically a postage-stamp of a garden--if Kaede reached out both arms she could reach the ends of it.]

Uh. I guess so.

[She's...open to constructive criticism?? Besides the gardening classes, she didn't have much in the way of firsthand knowledge about digging in dirt. Or a string to keep the rows straight. Or a wider selection of plant seeds. Or...someone taller than her to point out the crooked parts.]

[ Majima bent down at the neck to pull at a weed with a beak, then toss it into a little pail. It wasn't like he knew all that much about gardening, either, but he wasn't afraid of a little dirt. ]

So how ya been?

[Kaede watched him for a moment--so he really did mean that--and, quietly, knelt to tidy up the row she'd nearly put a foot in.

It wasn't long before the next perplexing thing, though. No one had...really asked her that before.

She marked this momentous occasion with--]

Um.

[And just...stood there, hand still half curled around a rock she meant to scoop away from the flowers.]

...I don't know. I haven't gotten stabbed. There's people in that house I didn't know were there. [She unfroze enough to gesture at the mansion, and finally scooted the rock away.]

Well, good on ya for not gettin' stabbed, that's definitely a positive.

[ Kaede was just a little bit concerning, here. ]

Would those be people ya like, or ones ya don't? For the most part, I'd say people've been pretty decent to me.

Kind of a surprise, really.

[ He pulled out another spiny weed, and tossed it into the pile. ]

I can deal with them.

[So people she likes, maybe. That was how you did interpersonal relationships, wasn't it?]

There's lots of places in the house to stay without talking to anyone. I haven't even checked the basement yet.

Hey, what more could ya ask for? From a situation like this, anyhow.

[ He scraped a rock aside, patting down the earth after it to smooth the growing surface. ]

I found out I was a witch. Uh, obviously. So I've been goin' to class for the first time in years.

What's that like?

[Kaede hadn't been in a classroom since the orphanage. That she remembered, anyway. She didn't remember them ever teaching how to turn into chickens. Such a letdown, honestly.]

Class? It's...

Well, it's definitely different from the first time around. The students ain't as fidgety, but it really depends on the instructor. Some of those older guys can really drone on.

I always did better workin' in practical terms. But hey, you could come and sit in on a class, couldn't ya?

[ Assuming, of course, that Kaede was mostly asking about what it was like in a magic class. ]

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Greetings always followed by sweet goodbyes [Open]

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