awashlogs | Event Two.

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Event Two.

Dust if you must, but bear this in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go, as go you must,
You yourself will make more dust!

t hasn’t been long since you’ve arrived. The dust has settled, so to speak. And there is… a lot of dust. The town is in disrepair. Some efforts have gone into making it a bit better, but it’s going to be a lot of work, there’s no denying that. There are only a few livable buildings right now, and even those are prone to letting the rain in, or missing stairs to the clearly present second floor, floors crumbling or creaking.

So it is that after a week or so to get used to their new living quarters.... There’s finally activity on the forum. Activity that doesn’t come from any of the people living here.

There’s a stickied forum post, and in it, a single post, from a user FFFFFF:

All-endearing cleanliness,
Virtue next to godliness,
Easiest, cheapest, needfull’st duty,
To the body health and beauty;
Who that’s human would refuse it,
When a little water does it?

Requirements: Everyone

They only have a bit of time to try to figure out what, exactly, it wants from them -- and then things begin to happen.

Welcome to Awash's first event log, everyone! Further information on this event can be found here at the OOC post.

You are welcome to start your own posts or logs for this event as well. If there are any questions, please ask them here. Thank you!

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[ It takes a hot minute. Fushimi's swimming skills aren't atrocious, but with a leg injury and the element of surprise at both the sudden collapse and the cold of the water, he has to struggle for a little longer than he'd like before he manages to get to the surface. He goes back under again -- twice -- before he manages to fully disentangle himself and manage to make it, sopping wet, to the edge.

Have you ever seen a cat that's just fallen into a pool? That's about what he looks like now.

He's going to respond by throwing his jacket off of his body and not exactly at Minato, just -- you know. Onto land. Because it soaks up like, twice its weight in water. ]

Ugh.

[Minato is thoroughly relieved he doesn't have to dive into the water, thanks, Fushimi.

But...!! As soon as Fushimi's chucking his jacket off, Minato's crouched next to the bank of the canal, reaching out for his arm.]

Hang in there--I'll help you out.

[That was a pretty nasty spill... it's like this place is out to get them now.]

[ Fushimi has had to accept more help in the past week than in the past, like, five years of his life combined, and it's really starting to rub him the wrong way. His luck is bad even on a good day, but this is starting to feel patently ridiculous.

All the same, he grabs Minato's arm to help pull himself out, coughing out the taste of that nasty water. This is fine; he didn't need to be dry. Or warm. Ever, apparently. ]

... thanks. [ He offers it once the coughing has subsided a little and he has a few seconds to catch his breath and sit.

Ugh, his feet are squelchy in his boots. ]

[Minato just shakes his head at that, frowning a little as soon as Fushimi's on solid ground. It still looked like a nasty fall, and this guy...]

Nothing to thank me for. [Anyone would try to help someone who fell into the water like that, right? But...]

Are you okay...? You look kind of... [like a bedraggled cat.]

... yeah. I know. [ It's not even as irritable as it might be usually -- just tired, like Fushimi is exhausted down to his very bones. He sits down once he's on solid ground, pulling off his boots and letting the water run out of them. At least there's a fireplace at home, so he can dry everything out.. again... ]

I was injured before I got here, and this place is set on not letting me heal. [ If bad luck was visible, it would be so cloistered around Fushimi that you wouldn't be able to see him at all. ]

It's just been one thing after another...

[... Yeah, no matter how he looks at it, that's--]

That's some pretty terrible luck.

[He just kind of tugs off his own blazer, though, reaching over to dump it onto Fushimi's shoulders. If he shakes it off or whatever, it's fine, it just seems right in this moment.]

I guess this really wouldn't be a very good place to heal. There's hardly anything around to tend to injuries.

[ARE YOU GONNA BE OKAY...]

[ It's really obvious how badly Fushimi is doing when he allows the jacket to be dumped on his shoulders. He reaches up and grabs it with one hand, but doesn't actually remove it. ]

...It's just going to get wet.

[ The thought is appreciated, even if at the moment it isn't helping as much as an industrial-size dryer might. Fushimi will take what he can get. ]

I found some antiseptic and fabric to make bandages, but it isn't optimal. I really should have just stayed in bed...

[Minato just shrugs. If it gets wet, it gets wet... it's the least he can do right now, even if he's aware it's not that helpful.

Doing nothing would be worse.]

I can't blame you for not staying in bed, though... it's hard to do that when we're in a place like this.

[...]

Especially since it seems like weird things are happening again.

I thought it would be better... to walk around. I heard that helps healing. [ He isn't a doctor and avoids them like a plague, so he can't say if that's actually true or not. He had a friend who was a healer back when he was routinely getting injured; he might be slacking a little in the medical knowledge department. ]

I've been looking for anything useful -- coffee, or more electronics, or... [ Some semblance of sanity in a world that is more questions than answers. ]

...cleaning supplies, maybe.

[Coffee, huh... that's a tough one. Minato's expression is contemplative. No electronics--he's looked, because his poor mp3 player is at the end of its rope, but:]

I've seen some cleaning supplies. [That's...one out of three?] Sorry, I haven't seen the others. But you can have those, if you need them.

It's a start. [ Fushimi says it with a sigh, sounding a little exhausted. He doesn't like the idea of following what the mysterious #FFFFFF person says, but at the same time, if there's even a chance that it would grant him a brief reprieve from all this awful luck...

Well, he isn't quite willing to try it yet, but he's getting there. ]

This place is falling apart... I don't know what they expect any of us to do about it.

Admittedly it'd be kind of nice not to be living in such a dump while we're here, but...

[... Yeah. He looks around, shaking his head vaguely.]

Some of the fixes that we'd need would be pretty hard for just us to all put together.

[It seems kind of ridiculous, but... on the other hand, they have to try, right?]

But... we have to do our best anyway.

If they gave us working laptops, they could have made sure this place was in better condition. [ Fushimi is certain of it. He's good enough with computers to be certain that there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and he doesn't think that some mysterious entity using the hex code for white in a colorless world is exactly the most subtle thing in the world. ]

Unless we're just cheap labor. [ Rats in a cage, more like. Fushimi just can't figure out why, but maybe that's less important...? ]

Cheap labor... to fix up this place?

[He supposes that's fair. The laptops struck Minato as incredibly out of place too--so it's hard to deny that clearly, something weird is going on here.

... More than just the obvious.]

You wouldn't think that pulling a bunch of people from different worlds would be that cheap, but I guess if you've got the power to do it, then...?

[He doesn't know how world-hopping works!! Shouldn't that be expensive... whether in effort or time or something?]

I've never seen a power like this... but it isn't out of the realm of possibility. [ There's people in Fushimi's world that are probably powerful enough to drag in people from other universes, they've just never used power like that... and since the source of that power was recently destroyed, Fushimi can't really imagine.

But he can imagine it's more possible somewhere else, to someone else. ]

Whatever they actually brought us here for, it can't do them any good if we're injured. [ And yet, everything is still against him. ]

[Minato's never even been able to comprehend power on that scale, honestly; the fact that Fushimi says it's not outside of the realm of possibility somehow makes it feel all the more surreal.]

It makes it seem a lot less...purposeful, doesn't it? Like it was an accident you were dragged here while injured.

On the other hand, the fact that there are people we know here from home makes it seem less accidental, too.

It seems... random, but from a certain selected group. I'm not the best choice if they wanted... [ Fushimi trails off, considering how best to finish that sentence, because he isn't actually the first pick for much of anything, he doesn't take. He isn't the best fighter, or the best strategist, or...?

He's like, 50% good at betraying people. ]

There probably isn't a point in trying to make sense of it, but there's not much else to do.

[Fushimi's the best at coffee ingestion, that was the goal here.]

Honestly... we'll probably never know the true answer. But at least theorizing helps make people feel a little less like there's no chance of figuring all of this out.

[So, really, who can blame them.]

Besides, we're getting to know a lot more about each other this way. [Cheesy.]

I'm not interested in getting to know everyone. [ It's a little harsh, but, well, that's Fushimi for you; it takes him years to warm up to people! Years! Though right now the "warming" part is going a little more rapidly than usual, given how cold and wet he keeps winding up. ]

... thanks all the same, though.

[Fushimi, you can't just make a statement like that and expect him to not follow up on it... he blinks, tilting his head, though he looks more curious than judgmental.]

Why do you say that...? Isn't it natural to get to know people in a situation like this?

Is it...? [ Fushimi looks dubious more than anything else. ]

The only thing unifying us is that we're all here together. That isn't a basis to get to know people. [ Fushimi is exceedingly antisocial and would really like to not interact with like, 85% of people on a regular basis. ]

... It isn't?

[New to him, really... Minato looks contemplative more than anything as he looks at Fushimi.]

I thought that facing a common goal or enemy was something that helped people bond together.

[ Fushimi shrugs up a shoulder. He doesn't even seem like he's trying to be actively negative or malicious -- just like this is obvious to him, and he doesn't understand why everyone else is different, when it comes down to it. ]

I don't care about making bonds with other people. [ They'll only let you down, but Fushimi knows better than to say that outloud. Someone exceedingly positive and friendly will manage to hear him from within a five mile radius and rocket over to tell him about the power of friendship or something and he'll choke on it and die. ]

If they're useful, they're useful; getting to know them doesn't change that.

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Event Two.

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