EVENT: ~*~Heat Wave~*~

[trainmasters]

Who: Heroes! Old ones, new ones...!
When: Day 42, afternoon
Where: Around the train

[ Good news, everyone! Those pesky cicadas are gone at last! You might have even had a chance to relax, except....

Except for the heat wave.

It's like the worst parts of the last dregs of summer come to torture you with excrutiating heat. It's heat so bad you could swear that you've started melting yourself the second you step outside. It's terrible. At least with the cold you can add more layers on, how are you supposed to deal with heat?? You can't just walk around naked??

(That's not a suggestion.)

Here's the thing about the heat, though: It's bad enough that it's causing mirages-- mirages of people you may even recognize, people who are lost in the dark. People who will try to lead you into danger, people who don't want what's best for you after all....

That aside, you may or may not have noticed that there's some new teammates on the train! The notification appears cheerfully on everyone's Chains:

WELCOME NEW HEROES

And you may find yourself wearing a label you can't seem to remove until you've spoken to at least one other person: "Hi, I'm ______! Talk to me about ______!"

There's a mischievous giggle in the wind that you may recognize as the same one that ran the plants and secrets game. ]

[[ NOTES: You're welcome to make team posts if you like, or intro directly into this mingle if you haven't already. Until next month's placements, the heat wave will persist. Characters stand the risk of seeing castmates not in the game until that point, mirages from the heat. Enjoy! ]]

Comments

[bowtiedbones]

Yes!

...and we're still working out what that means for us, but still!

[bad_crowmance]

But still.

[ He sounds extremely amused. ]

[bowtiedbones]

[gossips! all of you!!!!]

What do you want to know about Seo, Crow?

[bad_crowmance]

To start with? What's he like, how did you meet, how did you find out you're soulmates?

[bowtiedbones]

[huffs]

He's incredibly sweet, super buff, and we met playing a game hosted by deities where the whole goal was to figure who was whose soulmate.

[bad_crowmance]

[ Wait a moment. ]

A game hosted by deities?

[bowtiedbones]

Three of them. We were all actually invited from different dimensions and worlds for the game.

[bad_crowmance]

So this isn't your first time meeting people from other worlds, huh? What was the game like?

[bowtiedbones]

[nods]

It was a pretty fun game. It took a little over two weeks for us to solve it, but we were all there by agreement and the island we stayed on was super nice. We had two groups of people and we all had to figure who the soulbonded pairs were through a series of voting rounds.

[bad_crowmance]

Were there any clues along the way?

[ He's genuinely interested in this topic. ]

[bowtiedbones]

Not really! The game was set up with two stages of voting: first we would all pick a pair to be told if we were wrong or right on that guess. Then the next round we would pick a partner and have those pairs voted on. The solving was done by good guesses, logic diagrams, and getting to know each other.

[bad_crowmance]

Sounds like my kinda game! I almost wish I'd been invited.

[bowtiedbones]

It was pretty fun. There were a lot of great people there!

[bad_crowmance]

You make a lot of friends there, then?

[bowtiedbones]

Some of the best friends I have! And it’s where I met the only guy I’ve dated.

[bad_crowmance]

Nice! So you guys just keep up the dimension-hopping after that game? How does that work?

[bowtiedbones]

Yeah! I’m not sure how it works exactly for people from dramatically different worlds, but they weren’t going to give us all these bonds and then just split us up. So like a lot of us are just from variations of Earth so the overlap is such that we can go back and forth almost seamlessly. I could get on a plane in my dimension and land in someone else’s just like I was traveling normally. We can even text and call each other!

[bad_crowmance]

What's a plane?

[ Zemuria only has airships okay. ]

Sounds pretty convenient, though! And a lot of fun if you wanted to explore everyone else's versions of their world and figure out all the differences.

[bowtiedbones]

Airplanes are flying machines. They can get you a couple thousand miles in a few hours.

And for sure! I didn’t have the chance to go before I came here, since we do still have like, jobs and schedules, but there’s one world I super want to go and look at! There’s fauna there that’s been extinct on my world for thousands of years!

[bad_crowmance]

Oh, so they're kind of like airships.

[ He wonders what the difference is. ]

Somehow it doesn't surprise me you'd be interested in something like that. Well, with any luck you'll get a chance someday.

[bowtiedbones]

Hopefully! I've got a lot of trips and projects to catch back up on once we're done here.

[bad_crowmance]

Oh, so this is almost like a vacation for you.

[ Except for the whole. Trauma and having to save the world parts. ]

[bowtiedbones]

It's a little more like a hiatus than a vacation. I've found new things to study here!

[bad_crowmance]

Oh yeah? Like what kind of things?

[bowtiedbones]

I have my own new ability of turning into a wolf to study, I've been very interested in measuring the multi-eyed skulls of some of the wildlife here, there's some challenges in performing necromancy with corrupted skeletons that's kept me busy for weeks analyzing and preparing summoning techniques, and of course my own abilities have been restricted. I need to develop a lot of workarounds or alternative spells to fill in the gaps!