Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 67

This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Jan 8th 2010

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Feng Yi made me very, very happy last night! She proposed!! ♥ ^_^ ♥ Of course, I’m already married, so she asked to become a formal part of my relationship with Echo. I accepted immediately! ^_____^ How could I resist when I love her so much?! Isn’t it wonderful!? ♥ ^_^ ♥ Of course, I had to ask Echo about it, but I don’t know what I would have done if she’d said no. There are still details to work out, and things Yi has to understand before she commits to this. When I called Echo to ask how she felt about bringing Yi into our marriage, she explained a few things to me that made a lot of sense once she laid them out for me, but that might complicate things for Yi, if she can’t overcome her prejudice against the Japanese and the Amatsukami.

Echo explained that fate had a strong hand in my relationships. It’s no coincidence that as I’ve grown closer and closer to Yi, Miko has been drawn closer and closer to me. As Echo explained it (and this was all apparently explained to her by Persephone), my romance with Yi is an expression of my very nature as a goddess of light and darkness. Yi represents the pure, beautiful darkness that I’m coming to embody. But Miko represents my light aspect. In a sense, the two of them are extensions of me even while being their own individuals. Echo, who embodies aspects of both light and dark, life and death, is a balance in my life. My fate (and my desire) is to maintain that balance, but if I marry Yi, drawing her closer to me that ever before, the balance will be upset unless my relationship with Miko also becomes much closer, which fate demands it will.

I love Miko. She’s already a fate-bound part of me. I want to be closer to her, but there are two potential problems. For one thing, I’m still adamant about not corrupting Miko with the shikome taint again. She represents everything about me that’s good and pure, and I don’t want to sully that. But doing so is inevitable if we become closer. As it is, both of us have to struggle against our desire for one another.

The other problem is Yi’s prejudice. I’m trying to help her work through it and overcome at least a bit of her antipathy toward the Japanese, but it’s something she’s lived for her whole life, so it’s going to be a long and difficult road for her. Even though she’s polite to the Japanese members of my entourage, they can tell she dislikes them. And Miko’s no exception. I don’t know if Yi’s ready to accept Miko as an equal part of my marriage circle, whether Miko ends up as a formal part of it or not.

And then there’s the matter of my eventual union with Amaterasu. I don’t know exactly what that will entail, but it doesn’t matter. A union will occur—it’s part of my fate to become her shadow, and it’s what I want. It’s not like we’re merging into one being or anything, but I don’t think Yi’s going to like the idea of sharing me, even if only briefly, with Amaterasu.

Yi needs to know about these things before she commits to marry me. I’m just afraid she’ll withdraw her proposal, and I think that would break my heart. I gotta explain it to her soon, though.

That’s not the only drama that has happened since we took down Surtr’s furnace. After leaving Guan Yu’s camp, Xi Wang Mu transported us to Chengdu, where we had about a day off before we were given another mission on behalf of the Celestial Bureacracy, though this one came to us from Adam’s girlfriend Syn, oddly enough. I’ll get to that later.

My followers (minus Keiko, who’s still in Red Mountain, and Mercy, who’s with Chiaki in Japan) were already in Chengdu when we arrived, and shortly after I’d gotten settled into our hotel, Quinn paid me a visit. She wanted to talk about Keiko. For one thing, she asked me to patch things up with Keiko. I didn’t really think anything needed patching up, but apparently it does. Quinn rightly pointed out that I sometimes don’t realize the effect I have on others. People have a tendency to fall in love me, and when I don’t reciprocate those feelings, it can be hard on them. Most people are willing to accept it and move on, but Keiko’s served me for longer and worked harder than just about anyone else, and she feels like she deserves more from me than just friendship, especially when I’ve given my heart to others I’ve known for far less time, like Yi.

But I can’t give Keiko what she wants. I’ve already made the mistake of becoming involved with someone I didn’t love: Audrey. And when I realized what a huge mistake that was, I ended it. I’m not going to make the same mistake again. Sadly, while Keiko is one of my dearest friends, I’m not in love with her, so I can’t reciprocate her feelings. I’ll have to help her understand that when I get back to Red Mountain.

And speaking of Audrey, Keiko’s become involved with her. That’s a poisonous relationship. For all of Audrey’s good qualities (hell, I’ve had to worry a lot less about the shikome since she’s been in charge of them), I sometimes regret recruiting her. She has a habit of drawing the others into her tangled web. >_< I need to have a serious conversation with her about that, but she’s so cynical I’m afraid that she won’t actually listen. She’ll just argue in her jaded, bitter way and refuse to acknowledge her real problems. *Sigh* For all her insecurities and her self-destructive way of dealing with them, she can still be quite arrogant.

Anyway, I promised Quinn I’d do my best to help Keiko. Quinn also mentioned that she was bothered by the antagonism Keiko and Yi seem to share, though I’ll note that’s as much Keiko’s fault as it is Yi’s. Yi really is trying to improve her attitude, but it’s going to take time. I tried to help Quinn understand that, but I don’t think it helped. To some degree, Quinn’s projecting her own family’s racism onto Yi. Which, of course, led to a mild spot of awkwardness as Quinn was leaving when she opened the door only to find Yi there about to knock.

The drama with my followers aside, though, I was thrilled to see Yi. I really needed her after my near-death at the hands of Kagatsuchi. We had a great night, soft and tender and loving… ^_^ And in the dark hours after midnight, she asked to formally join my marriage! ♥

But I’ve already been over that. ^_^

In other news, Sera and Charles have apparently really hit it off! What I gather from Kimiyo is this: Charles and Sera went out to dinner last night. It was definitely a date, but over dinner, Sera explained everything to him. She told him about her dark past before she became a youkai, about the maid whose rape and murder she engineered, and about how she still fears that part of herself. She explained how she’d recently discovered that Sadako (one of my three most recent elite shikome, the one who’s seriously involved with Audrey) is actually her great-granddaughter, and how she’d learned from Sadako that her family in Japan still uses her name to threaten disobedient children. O_O Poor Sera!

She also told him about some of the drama going on with my youkai followers, specifically the fallout of the meeting with dark Miko in which Sera and Keiko came to blows and Kimiyo started to despise Keiko.

Once all of that was laid out, Sera told Charles to think about it, and if he still wanted to try a relationship with her, he could find her in her hotel room.

Well, Charles did think about it. I gather he had a long conversation with Adam about it (Adam being more familiar than most with the drama seething in the ranks of my entourage). As to what Charles ultimately decided…well, let me put it this way. Yi and I were awakened close to dawn by Sera knocking on our door to ask me if I could sense whether or not she was pregnant (she wasn’t). It’s been awhile since she’s had to worry about birth control, and it kinda slipped her mind. ^_^  I think she got Pierre to use his powers over health to keep her from getting pregnant until she’s ready. I guess I need to develop that power myself, but given that all of my lovers are other women, it doesn’t really come up…

Though, speaking about that, Quinn did ask if she could use the potion Echo got from Persephone that would allow me to make Echo conceive. Turns out I didn’t need it thanks to my shapechanging powers (and now Echo and I have the Navel-Piercing of Conception, so I don’t even have to change form again if we want to conceive).  I let her have it, though I’m a little curious about what she intends to do with it. I know she wants another child. Is she planning on getting Elisa to use it so that she can have her kid?

Damn, my love life, and that of everyone around me, apparently, is certifiably weird. Is it me? Or is it the influence of my Dodekatheon wife? LOL.

Echo also called last night while I was with Yi. She wanted to let me know that my father had dropped by to see Rose. He and I aren’t really on speaking terms. Hell, the only time I’ve talked to him in the past few years is when I called to ask about Miko. But apparently he keeps up with my career. He learned that I’d had a child from some music industry magazine and came to see his granddaughter.

Echo said he was nice to everyone, though she was miffed that he kept referring to her as my “friend.” I think he knows I’m involved in a homosexual relationship and doesn’t really approve, but he hasn’t really approved of me since I was a teenager, so that’s nothing new. And my divine awakening happened after our falling out, so he’s not really aware of the divine side of my life, I guess. But one thing definitely piqued my interest. Apparently something about Echo reminded him of “Izzy.” He kinda broke down and left quickly after that.

Izzy is my mother. That’s the name I knew her by before I discovered that she was Izanami. But I’ve never seen anything in my mother that reminds me of Echo. I can’t help but wonder what side of Izanami my father saw and loved enough to give her a child. It must have been an echo of who she was before she died. In any event, my father’s reaction to Echo makes me think he still loves “Izzy.” I actually feel sorry for him.

I guess when our current fight against the titans is over and I can get back to Red Mountain, I’ll call him and see if he’d like to meet. I’m not really looking forward to it, but I guess he deserves to know the truth about me and mom.

Let’s see….what else. Oh yeah. I called to check up on Mercy and Chiaki, hoping their blind date had gone well and that they were hitting it off. I learned that they’d been…enjoying each other…almost since Mercy had arrived. I know shikome can be rather energetic about such things, but I didn’t know Mercy was so ravenous when it came to lovemaking! She always seemed more reserved to me, but I guess she must like Chiaki, which is good for Chiaki’s self-esteem, at least. Anyway, I spoke to both of them, and I didn’t want their relationship to stall out because they didn’t really get to know each other. So I ordered them both to make an effort to get beyond the sex and see if they could connect on a personal level. I know Chiaki’s up for it. I just hope Mercy listened.

And finally, in other news, a Hecatonchires apparently walked out of the Mediterranean Sea and stomped into the mountains of Greece, or so the news reported. I didn’t see it, but Adam mentioned it. The Titanic also appeared in the Mediterranean about that time, and by some reports there was a Latino man at the bow screaming, “I’m king of the world!!” I’d bet anything that Storm and Cesar are behind this. I gotta call Storm and make sure he’s got things under control.

With all of my interpersonal issues dealt with, or at least put on hold until I get back to Red Mountain, we were able to focus on other things. First off, Xi Wang Mu decided to mess with us. She showed up and mentioned that she had a cave full of the ghosts of Japanese soldiers captured during WWII. She’d been toying with them for years, but had decided to be magnanimous and let us go and deal with them, rescuing them or destroying them as we saw fit. Unfortunately, a unit of titanspawn were headed there to capture them so that they could be turned into specters. >_<

This whole thing kinda pissed me off, because Xi Wang Mu knew that Yi and I would disagree over the fates of those ghosts. Pierre was pretty incensed over the whole thing too. Yi wants to judge them all herself and send them to eternal torment in the most painful pits of Di Yu, but I want to take them to Yomi and hand them over to Izanami’s safekeeping. We argued about it a bit, and in the end, I was able to get Yi to agree to use her powers of judgement to judge them fairly, each one individually, to determine who deserves punishment in Di Yu for crimes against the Chinese people, and who does not. I’m hoping that a good number of the soldiers were among those Japanese who didn’t commit horrible war crimes or hate crimes against the Chinese so that Yi can see for herself that not all Japanese deserve her hate. If so, then maybe some good can come out of Xi Wang Mu’s mischief. This could be an important step in Yi’s healing. In any event, we weren’t able to interview all the ghosts before the titanspawn arrived.

Pierre had scouted our enemies by projecting his consciousness into one of the local birds, a nightjar, so we knew what to expect and ambushed our foes. The fight was short and sweet. They were no match for us, just a few shitidama (which I exorcised almost out-of-hand), a gyuki, a taotie mask, and a couple of these weird giant ants made of solid darkness. I gave Charles all the demon bullets I had, so he focused on the heavily armored ants while Adam took out the taotie mask and the gyuki. The taotie mask tried to switch my mind with others in the group a couple of times, but we managed to hold it together. Yi stood before me to defend me from harm. It was really chivalrous, and really romantic. ^_^

We’re moving the ghosts somewhere safe until we can finish interviewing them, but we’re planning on going to see a Bureacracy water spirit named Fragrant Seabreeze perform at a local lounge-style club later tonight. And then, tomorrow, we’re headed to Di Yu to resolve yet another titan incursion.

See, according to Syn, who shared this info with Adam when she showed up to spend time with him here in Chengdu, the titanspawn have invaded a portion of Di Yu. Yi tells us that some of the prisons in which ghosts are kept have been cut off, and that fighting is happening just over the Void in the lowest reaches of Di Yu, dangerously close to Suko-no-kumi. Many Bureacracy prison administrators have gone missing and have probably been corrupted.

So we’re headed in to see if we can’t fix the problem and drive the titanspawn out of Di Yu. Yi’s coming along and we’re going to talk to her father to get a better picture of the situation before we head in, but there’s really no time to waste. Every moment we delay is another moment the titans have to strengthen their position. And if we don’t stop them, then they’ll be able to capture a host of ghosts to turn into specters, adding even more numbers to their armies.

So, wish us luck!