eyemind | time isn't real and the party is always } network + action

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time isn't real and the party is always } network + action

[hey, it’s a jack video! and she is grinning with excitement, because she has something cool to show you.]

So. Time is a construct, right? But it’s a pretty important one to a lot of us. We mark the passage of time in cycles, with celebrations, and I’m guessing most of us have missed at least one birthday, favorite holiday, or anniversary since we’ve been on this long, strange trip. For me, it’s been four birthdays since I was home. Not that I did a whole lot for my birthday, but it was still nice to take myself out for ice cream and check the box for surviving another year.

[the video feed flips around to show the observation room/lucifer’s bar, tastefully decorated with sparkly silver streamers and balloons. as jack slowly pans the camera across the room, you’ll see tables have been brought in and are loaded up with a variety of foods, an assortment of drinks, and of course a nice big cake.]

Anyway, whatever it is you’ve missed, we’re celebrating it - right now. So get thee to the observation room! If nothing else, you can celebrate an unbirthday with the rest of us.

[have a party mingle! or you can talk to jack on network, if you really want. feel free to assume your involvement with party setup, making food, etc. and have a good time!]

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Wait, what?

[John blinks in a rare moment of disbelief when he hears just how large cockatrices run where the man comes from. He's gobsmacked at the idea.] Thirty bloody feet? That's insane! [It's not that he thinks Prompto is lying, he's all but given up on trying to figure out what's real or not at this point. John has seen too much to automatically write off anything as a falsehood. It's just that where he's from they don't run even close to that size. And it's a good thing as far as how John sees it. Cockatrices are enough of a problem when scaled down.]

Where I'm from you rarely see them more than two feet tall. Can't imagine trying to wrangle one that large. [He pauses for a moment, running a couple of ideas through his head that would work for something so massive with such dangerous abilities.] I could, but it'd be a hell of a lot of work. [He tilts his head, taking in what Prompto has told him. Things are very different between their home worlds as far as beasts go, it seems.] Ours aren't poisonous, not really. I don't think they'd be edible, but it's the gaze and the breath you've got to watch out for.

They're fine to eat, they just spit poison at you. [ Eos is such a charming, welcoming place. ]

They're not that big compared to like a catoblepas, they're like a hundred and fifty feet tall! [ He smiled a little bit. ] Oh, but I think the biggest creature I saw was an adamantoise the size of a mountain!

How's the taste, though? Fine to eat doesn't mean tasty. [Sounds just charming, it's not like everything there wants to kill a person...

John is again surprised at how large certain beasts are in Prompto's home world.] Our catoblepas aren't much bigger than the usual cattle. Just far more interesting. [The talk of the adamantoise really has John's attention. It's a giant thing, that's for certain, but the name itself means nothing.] Tell me about the mountain sized creature, will you? I've never heard of anything like it.

My friend Ignis makes everything taste pretty good, so we got lucky maybe? I dunno. It's not the kind of thing we would've had in Insomnia at least.

[ The only thing that likely doesn't want the humans to die are cats and chocobos. It's an unusual place. ]

Sure. It's a hunt we did, paid a lot too. The mountain look was really this huge shell and it had four paws I guess and a head that all stuck out of the shell. Every time it moved there were ground quakes.

See, that's the ticket. When you've got a mate who's good in the kitchen everything improves. Can't do more than a fry-up to save my life, but I eat well when Chas is around.

[Chas is a caretaker, he cooks, makes sure that John is eating well, keeps them both on track with jobs, drives where John needs for him to, does more than any one person should ever bother to for someone like John Constantine. John doesn't know what he'd do without him long term. He supposes that he'll find out, one way or another.

He's further fascinated by the description of the beast.] Sounds a bit like a giant tortoise. [A very giant tortoise.] We've got some pretty large monsters, but nothing quite like that. At least not that I've encountered.

Yeah, Iggy's really great at it. I can do okay, at least, I've gotten better by now. I won't die or anything, but Iggy's definitely the best.

[ Ignis is a caretaker - just not Prompto's caretaker. ]

I'll take your word on that. [ He can accept someone from a different world has different creatures. ]

That's definitely the biggest one, but there's quite a few out there that are bigger than houses, or cars or whatever. Kinda dangerous, and with the night there are far more dangerous scourgified creatures and monsters about. Hopefully the scourge is gone now...

Suppose you'll have to, I've got no easy way to prove myself now. [He rarely manages to keep a cellular in one piece for long anyway, it's not like he currently has one to show pictures off of. And even if he did, he doubts that there's a common wireless that would work between the ship and foreign world technology anyway.

Not that he's thinking of that now. The differences between their worlds are still something that really has John's focus locked. But he stops talking long enough to strip the meat off of one of the wings, before wiping his fingers and getting back to it.]

So you've got beasts that everyone can see, yeah? They're corporeal, you can find them and fight them, are they common knowledge where you hail from? Because where I'm from, it's all a bit more secretive. Everything is hidden, most is considered fiction. The average sod will go through his entire life without encountering a monster of any kind. And that's for the best.

[ It's alright, the break is plenty of time for Prompto to keep eating, look, chicken wings are really good. Best thing he's eaten in a long time, his hips will forgive him. ]

Uhhh, yeah, those aren't the monsters though, just the local wildlife. [ The local wildlife sounds like monsters, it can be confusing. ]

Eos is so sick that it infects the wildlife and they mutate into something else entirely. Sunlight can kill anything that's fully infected, so they only come out at night. [ He chows down on another chicken wing and licks sauce off his thumb. ] Course, it's been night for ten years so...yeah. Lot of people have died.

Sounds rough.

[It doesn't sound like pity when he speaks, more like the statement of a simple fact. Few ever have it truly easy, and one thing that seems consistent for pretty much every world is suffering.] And you said something about hunts, right? You take on the wildlife in general? Or are you more specialized?

[John doesn't consider himself a hunter. There's something that doesn't sit right with him about the way most hunters see anything that's not human as something that needs to be killed. However, he does his fair share of it anyway. Simply because people die if certain things aren't kept in check.]

Yeah it sucks. [ He laughs, it's less humour and more like this is just the situation and they're making the best of it. ]

I'm not a hunter exactly. [ Prompto shakes his head a little bit. ] I mean, I've been doing a lot of that lately because that's all there is to do. There are so many monsters that unless you've got a base with light, there's nothing but death out there so you can imagine what supply runs are like.

[ He shakes his head. ] Six aren't interested in saving us either so...but I actually am is a Crownsguard. I protect the king. That's my actual job. He's my best friend, but I guess that's over...going forward, I'll do what it was he wanted which was to protect the people of Lucis.

So you're overrun as a whole. Sounds dreadful. [There's a good deal of victimization on Earth, and sometimes areas can become quickly inundated with one type of predator or another. But Prompto's situation at home seems particularly dismal.

But John can't do anything about the situation. Especially not here. And he's not going to stop snacking because of the story, not when there's good food. Besides, he doesn't know how long it'll be available. He's still new to this situation, and more than a little paranoid. So he'll eat as he can, listen and learn, and hopefully he'll figure his way out somehow. He's needed back home, after all. The rising darkness won't stop for anyone.] I feel like I'm missing something. Let's start with six, if you don't mind? Who are they supposed to be?

[ Hey, if Prompto's not going to stop eating, no need for John to stop. Subject matter aside, that's just how things are at home. He doesn't exactly have a problem with eating when he can. Eos is how it is. No need to miss out on good food. ]

Oh yeah, guess that would be a good question. The Six are the Astrals that created and watch over Eos, at least, that's how it's supposed to be. The Hexatheon is described in a book called the Cosmogony. [ It's religion, just a different one. ]

As Six implies, there are six of them. The Archaean, Titan. Kind of represents the ground of Eos. Well known for catching the meteorite at the Disc of Cauthess. The Fulgurian, Ramuh. He controls storms and is associated with the rule of law. Then there's the Hydraean, Leviathan. She's...well. Goddess of the seas. They say she fell asleep long ago and when we woke her up... [ He chuckles. ] Yeah she wasn't happy. She doesn't seem to care much for humans.

[ Halfway there, he continues. ] The Glacian, Shiva. She's the goddess of ice. She's kind of the most compassionate...really likes Noct, actually. She's the one they say fell in love, so they suspect that's why she's so kind. [ He believes in the Six, having seen them, but he wasn't exactly completely up on the whole scripture. ]

Then there's the Infernian, Ifrit, who gave people fire, so they say and that caused all kinds of conflict. Lastly, there's the Draconian, Bahamut. Unlike the rest of them who are all tied to Eos in some way, he's kind of like the one out of sight you know? He's..he was the patron Astral of Lucis. Oh.

[ He licks his fingers, he wasn't wearing his jacket, but it wasn't far. He wipes them on his pants like the uncultured guy he is and grabs his jacket. He shows him the patch on the shoulder. ] This is the mark of the Kingsglaive, but yeah! A representation of Bahamut.

[John brightens up a little bit, listening to the explanation and taking it in with keen interest. Minutes ago he was fascinated with the similarities and differences in their home worlds, and he gets to feel the same way once more in one conversation.

So much of this sounds familiar. Not just in some of the names that he knows but attaches to different stories, although Ramuh's name is a mystery to him entirely. But what really makes John amused, in the most bitter sort of way, is that no matter where one goes in any world, there seems to be a creator, or worse, a whole damned group of them, sitting on their arses while what they made falls.

And he's sick of it.] So they're like gods. Or actually gods? Of course. Everyone knows how damn useful those are. [Those might easily be replaced with a horrible slur, and it would sound the same somehow. John Constantine doesn't have the best relationship with authority figures of the mortal sort, and it's far worse when it comes to those with divine level powers.

He does nod in approval of the patch's design, though.] So we've had a few of those names in our history, but squire, let me tell you, it's a totally different situation. Shiva's a bloke and a bloody destructive one. We had The Titans, a family, not just one of 'em. Leviathan lines up close enough. Ifrits come in a few flavors, some smoke and fire aligned, all hellish, so I can see that. And Bahamut has been debated. That's for sure. [There's a snort.] None of those debated form match up to that fancy looking thing.

They're gods, yeah. [ And Prompto snorts at his comment about how useful they are and he agrees because Bahamut is the biggest jerk there ever could be. ] Can't be too blasphemous since I've seen them and all that but yeah, kinda useless. Or rather, I think they're playing with us.

[ They took his friend. That was not cool. ]

That's really interesting! Kinda makes me wish I paid more attention to the Cosmogany, but you know, it's not the kind of thing that I was really into. Kinda did holidays, that's about it.

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