revenance_rpg | Shop Straightening Shenanigans

Entry tags:

Shop Straightening Shenanigans

Characters: Ienzo, Namine, and open
Content: Cleaning up the spirit painting shop and tea shop. Also shenanigans. Possibly booze.
Location (including world): 4th District, Traverse Town
Time of Day: EVENING (really, morning as far as the "day" goes)
Warnings: Kia is trying to lull us into complacency with comedy elements. :3

Ienzo had set his coat aside and folded it up neatly. The furniture was in well-ordered heaps outside the shop, but everything needed to be cleaned and painted before actually bringing things inside. He didn't even want to consider what they'd have to do to make the upstairs comfortable and livable. He reminded himself that he'd have to mention the apartments on the upper levels; people might be pleased to find a place to live that wasn't the hotel.

The ground floor was large and mostly open, though the space could be conveniently divided so that each business would have its own area. It did have back room space, fortunately enough, so that they didn't have to think too much about creating their own back areas. One of the back areas currently had several crates, one of which Ienzo suspected that several of the adults would prefer to get into sometime soon, given the general stress levels. Still, that would be a question for when they were open for business.

Ienzo took up a broom and headed towards the back to begin sweeping things out.

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Even, persistently anonymous Pricklemane in tow, arrived not quite on Sora's heels. It would be foolish in the extreme to speculate that he had deliberately hung back to avoid encountering Sora at the door. In the extreme.

He regarded the space with a disdainful eye that said more about his shortness of sleep than about his actual opinion. He did, however, bestir himself to say, "Good morning, Naminé."

Ienzo headed into the main space. "Good morning, everyone." It was good to see a few people here; they might expect some more, but this wasn't too small a crew for cleaning the building. "Thank you for coming."

Xion hurried in after some of the others, Barkley happily trotting at her heels. While he joined in the round of greetings going on among the Spirits, Xion was more concerned with the others. "Good morning. Sorry I'm late. "

York was exploring the fourth district a bit more; it was just a good idea. He had been practicing fighting along with Sparky; it was good to know what your partner could do. They were plowing through nightmares pretty well, so when he caught sight of a group of people meeting up, he figured he could take the time to check it out.

Sparky trotted into the building first, and York headed in after him. "Hey. We having a party in here today?"

"Good morning, everyone. Ah, nobody's late, so that's okay." Namine had just gotten done greeting the others and trying to reassure those who were worried about being late when another spirit and their owner arrived. "Hello, York. It's not really a party...everyone said they'd help Ienzo and me clean up."

Wash slipped in the door behind York with Fang swooping in behind him, just in time to hear Namine say nobody was late. Well, that was good to hear. "Oh, good," he spoke up, stepping forward and clapping a hand on York's shoulder, his grin audible in his voice. "York loves to do this sort of thing. He really likes the jobs with heavy lifting. Isn't that right, York?"

"Hey, I just know that I can leave all the fiddly dusting jobs to you," York replied, grinning back at Wash. He glanced around. "I think I know everyone here..." At least, he was fairly sure he'd seen all of them on the communicators at some point, if not their names.

Sora had met everyone present and been saying hello as people arrived, but at that comment, he realized he hadn't introduced himself to York (even though they'd spoken to each other) and had only gotten his name from listening to public conversations over the communicator.

"Huh, we sort of met? I'm Sora."

"Yeah, we chatted a bit." York nodded to Sora.

Well, this wasn't what he'd planned to do with his day, but it seemed like a pretty solid thing to be involved in. Might as well make the best of it and pitch in.

Well, it seemed that everyone had at least introduced themselves, and the group was definitely big enough to take care of everything that needed to be done.

"Maybe we should start, then? We might want to make smaller groups, and each work on a different area."

Fortunately, she knew enough to know that Wash and York had been joking when the mentioned tasks that the other preferred.

Ziva responded to Namine's greeting, watching as Fluffy took off from her shoulder and went to talk with the other spirits. At least he had enough socialness to make up for her lack of it. She stood back from the main group for the moment, watching as people arrived and chatted, storing away information for later.

She'd probably socialize more when the work actually got started. Being around a group of people made her slightly uncomfortable, but she figured she'd get over it soon enough.

Ienzo turned to Namine. "Would you like to look at possible arrangements for the space? I was thinking of this arrangement of tables but I wasn't sure what colors you would prefer."

Ienzo called up an illusion of a fully furnished space around them; he started the walls in a light blue shade and then shifted it to a neutral tan.

Namine nodded. It might be a good idea to settle on that before everyone split up to start cleaning. "Yes, the tables look fine like that, and..."Here she paused, frowning thoughtfully. "I think I like the blue better."

She had a vague idea that blue wasn't the usual color of choice in this kind of situation, but he'd asked for her preference. Answering those kind of questions was still a little awkward, especially in front of others; she wasn't used to it. Only the need to actually look at the image Ienzo created kept her from speaking more to the floor than him.

Wash was also pretty well familiar with everyone else in the room - including Even, unfortunately. He saw Ziva across the room and nodded to her. It'd be nice to talk to her now, when he was in a much better mood than he was a few days ago.

And then the room abruptly changed, and he froze. No. No, this was not happening.

He hadn't had an episode like this in years - the flashbacks the memories the bits of Epsilon still stuck in his brain only came out when he slept, only took over his nightmares, never when he was wide awake-

But he wasn't wide awake, not really, it was a dream world and he'd known that from the start and maybe that meant that this could happen whenever, at any time, and he couldn't prepare couldn't hide couldn't take the time to get a hold on himself, and he didn't want to do this here and now, not in front of York and Ziva and Namine-

Who was reacting to the change, he realized abruptly. She was commenting on it. A quick glance around the room told him he wasn't the only one mystified at the sudden change in the interior of the room, which meant he wasn't the only one seeing it. It wasn't Epsilon, it wasn't his damage, it wasn't just in his head - it was something someone else had done. It wasn't just him.

Wash let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, slowly relaxing. Thank God he hadn't taken his helmet off yet - that frozen, panicky fear he was sure had been showing on his face would have been really difficult to explain. He opened his mouth to say something - some crack about how about a warning next time - and closed it again, not trusting his voice not to shake or crack. Instead, he took another breath. That was one hell of a false alarm.

York startled and backed towards the door; Delta appeared next to him to stare around intently. He'd seen Carolina's trick with her armor, but nothing that would transform a room like this. It was cool, but it was definitely kind of unnerving, too. "Whoa. Uh, you want to warn someone before you do that? It's cool, but that's pretty jarring."

He glanced at Wash to see how he was doing; Wash probably wouldn't be too good with sudden changes either. Delta, on the other hand, was chugging away trying to figure out what was going on so hard that York could feel it.

The illusion threw Ziva for a moment, all of a sudden the room had changed with no one doing any work. An eyebrow raised as she looked at it, listening to the commentary on colors. This must be that 'magic' everyone was mentioning, something she still didn't believe much in. Keeping her wonder to herself, she shifted her gaze to the others in the room, trying to gauge their reactions.

She didn't change her posture, even as Fluffy flew back down to land on her shoulder. He seemed ruffled a bit by the sudden change, and she noted that. People around her were reacting differently, so she wasn't the only one who was startled by this development, including Wash. His reaction caught her attention, but she didn't make any commentary. If it came up later, she'd ask, but, as she could attest, things may be better buried and left alone.

For now, she watched and filed things away, waiting for more direction on what they needed or wanted her to do.

Even regarded the tan with distaste. "Haven't you had enough of neutral colors for, oh, ever?" Goodness knew he had. At least Ienzo hadn't suggested white.

The shift in the room was mildly startling, but seeing Namine react to it as if she expected it was enough to assume nothing was wrong. Then he realized what they were using the illusion for. It was actually a pretty neat use for illusions.

And then Even spoke up. It had been pretty obvious from the exchange on the post asking for help a few days before that he was likely going to spend the time picking everything apart. Sora just rolled his eyes. Frankly, the guy reminded him of a science teacher he'd had in school back home, but that was neither here nor there.

He agreed with Namine about the blue, personally, but it wasn't his call. He directed his comments elsewhere, "That's a neat way to use illusions."

Xion's eyes widened in surprise at the illusion, and she just barely avoided visibly startling. While she'd had a vague awareness of Zexion's ability to use illusions, it hadn't been at the front of her mind. Aside from that, she hadn't made the connection that Ienzo might have inherited Zexion's abilities. Once she thought about it, it made sense. She'd seen Even use ice magic.

It looked like she wasn't the only one to be surprised. Namine was the only who seemed to have been expecting the illusion. York was right, a little warning would have been good. Once she'd recovered, she decided she agreed with Even (and Sora, had he spoken that thought aloud); the blue was better than the tan.

This was a good way to use illusions, but then another question came to mind. "Are we just cleaning up this floor?"

It looked like there was more to the building than just the shop area.

Ienzo changed the color back to blue again. "I apologize for startling you," he said to everyone in general; it was easy to forget that not everyone was familiar with illusions. He smiled faintly. "Unfortunately this talent isn't incredibly useful when fighting nightmares, but it is my specialty. As to the color, I do like the blue and I think it should be Namine's choice, as she hasn't had the opportunity to decide such things before."

Ienzo let the illusion fade away. It would take quite a bit of work to get to that point, but at least they had a plan now.

"Namine and I have an apartment on the second floor, but we'll understand if you don't want to help with that as well; it's a large space."

His special talent was making people see things that weren't there. Great. If Wash had had any doubts before that Ienzo was one to keep an eye on, those had disappeared with this particular revelation.

And then, because one heart attack wasn't enough, he mentioned that he and Namine had an apartment. Presumably together.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

He closed his eyes and took a long, slow moment to get everything under control and calmed down. It was the same method he used while dealing with Caboose, and he figured it'd work pretty well in just about any situation. Right. "Let's take care of this one first," he suggested, voice even. "We'll worry about that when we've finished down here."

And hopefully, in that time, he could pull Namine aside and have a talk.

It actually took Even a moment to recall that not everyone was used to Ienzo's abilities, or possibly to illusion magic at all. (And yes, Sora, he saw that eyeroll. Brat.)

"You have the whole building, then?" He revised his estimation of Ienzo and Naminé's general competence to live on their own slightly upwards. Slightly.

So, this was apparently a normal thing. Ziva watched as the colors shifted and explanations were given. Heck, she even considered the fact that it was a great way to redecorate if painting was involved.

Shrugging, she listened to the conversation, mentally agreeing that the blue looked a bit better. Sounded like it was going to be an interesting and productive afternoon, as soon as everything was agreed on. And, if they still needed the help, she was willing to stay and help with the other floor too. It kept her busy.

To Namine, it was very normal, and, unfortunately, she'd forgotten how startling the illusions could be to anyone not used to them. Apologies seemed to be in order, so she added hers to Ienzo's. "I'm sorry, too."

For a moment she tensed at the mention of her lack of experience in choosing her preference, and the fact they were sharing an apartment. She hadn't been sure she wanted those known yet. Fortunately, none of the others mentioned those. "We have the whole building, yes, and there's space on the third floor if anyone needs it.

"We can start down here. Mostly we need to sweep and dust--and move the furniture."

Help with the upstairs would probably be needed, but she'd follow Ienzo's lead and not ask for that now.

"There's more brooms over there," Ienzo said, pointing at where they leaned against the wall. He crossed the room and returned to the group with a bucket full of rags. "We can use these for dusting. It's actually much cleaner than we'd thought it would be, but there's no excuse to leave it at all untidy."

He didn't have a particular preference as to how everyone broke into groups; cleaning, painting, and furniture arrangement wasn't exactly the most difficult task set.

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